it is important for us not to spend all our energy focused on what is wrong with them. we developed an american solution, a fundamentally different approach, starting with the economy. we said, if you want american jobs at american growth and american business, here is a tax policy that will get you there. i challenge you to go out. i suspect virtually any economist will tell you that the policy i just outlined a break 50% reduction of social security and medical -- medicare tax, 12.5% corporate rate, you would have an explosion of economic growth in the united states. . .

so they only count oil and natural gas. well, now it turns out we have a new technology in natural gas, we can drill down about 8,000

feet, we can then drill out horizontally four miles in every direction. the result is we're now discovering gas in shale and we have enormous quantities of gas. from western new york through western pennsylvania, through eastern ohio through west virginia and kentucky, all the way down across texas, there is this enormous deposit of natural gas, none of which we knew about five years ago because it wasn't economically developable because we didn't have the right technology. now, how much natural gas? well, in the last five years, we've discovered over a hundred years supply. so now, if you go back to your campus and you start a debate about energy policy, here's your poor liberal friend all about to tell you about how we're going to run out of all these things so we better rapidly go to late green technology by tuesday because by wednesday your car's not going to work and you're not going to have any more air conditioning, the estimate right now is we probably have a

minimum of 12 years supply that we haven't found yet. it also turns out last year that they increased their estimate of the size of the baakan in north dakota which is producing oil by a factor of 25. not 25%, 2500%. the u.s. geological survey estimated it was that much bigger. three weeks ago, they estimated there's a brand-new formation in north dakota and next to the baakan formation and they think it has 1500% more energy than they thought it had two months ago. you suddenly realize if we get new technology and we're allowed legally to explore, we might actually be able to produce all the energy we need without having to pay either saudi arabia or venezuela. [applause] >> i'll give you a very simple

slogan to go back to your campuses with, and this will be a really good debate format. we believe that bowing to a saudi king is not an effective energy policy. [applause] >> so let me just for a minute, i'm going to run through a set of ideas and then i'll going to toss it open to questions. but i want you to see the contrast. we believe you ought to stimulate the american worker, american business, small business in particular to maximize the growth of american jobs through the american private sector. they believe you ought to raise taxes massively to hire more bureaucrats to control more of america through politicians. that is a fundamentally different world. we believe you ought to develop american energy and american technology so america's able to keep the money at home, both for

national security and for economic growth. they believe you ought to raise taxes massively on american energy, cripple the american economy, and make sure that you're dependent forever on countries like venezuela and saudi arabia, a fundamentally different model. we believe you ought to develop green technology. i wrote a book called "contract with europe," describing a green conservatism, but we also recognize there are 240 million vehicles in the current fleet that are going to require current technology fuels for the next generation. they believe he we ought to make a magic switch overnight to technology that is not -- that does not yet exist, at a price that we can't imagine using things we don't know about, from companies that have not yet been formed. fundamentally different model. [laughter] [applause] >> we believe the world is dangerous, our borders ought to be controlled, we ought to have

efficient natural security to defend america is our allies. they believe the c.i.a. is dangerous and that if only every prisoner had therapy, they would all be available for release next tuesday so they could vote in the 2012 campaign on behalf of the party that liberated them. i mean, fundamentally different world views. [applause] >> now, i just cite this because i think what reagan was saying at cepac in 1975, after the collapse at watergate, at a period when conservatism seemed to be back on defense and he said we need bold colors, no pale pastels. he was describing this kind of contrast. he was saying, don't try to be liberal light. try to offer a vision of a successful, dynamic america.

we have three core goals: safety, prosperity, and freedom. now, we ought to stand up firmly and say we're prepared to do what it takes to make america safe, we're prepared to do what it takes to make sure that we're the most creative and most productive economy in the world so we can be the most prospero prosperous. and by ensuring our safety and ensuring our prosperity, we want to make decisions that maximize our freedom, which gets me to my last major point which is health care. you should go home and you should contact every person you know and you should use everybody you have on facebook and everybody you have on your e-mail account and you should make sure that everybody talks to their member of congress and their senator to stop the left-wing government bureaucratic health model that they're trying to pass in the house. [applause] >> we do need to reform the health system. i founded the center for health

transformation because i believe we can have a better system with more wellness, more early testing, more self-management of chronic diseases. i think that we can have a system which actually moves at a much higher tempo, with greater efficiency, at lower cost. but i think that's a system that ought to be between the doctor and the patient. that's a system which ought to be run according to best practices. what we do not need is a government bureaucracy imposing left-wing political values in the name of saving the budget by cutting health costs by refusing to give people health care. [applause] >> if any of your friends or your professors doubt that the federal government is an incompetent manager of health care, jim frogue of the center for health transformation just produced a new book which you

can get at healthtransformation.net called "stop paying the crooks." inning it's a clearer statement in a city that's not very clear, but i think it's a very important notion. jim and 13 experts studied medicare and medicaid. their conclusion was that there's between $70 billion and $120 billion a year of your money being paid to crooks. now, when i say "crooks," i mean a dentist in new york who filed 982 procedures a day. i mean a dental office in brooklyn that had somebody who stood out front and said, "if you will loan us your medicaid card for 30 seconds, we will give you a free d.v.d. player." i'm talking about five pizza parlors in miami that had registered with the medicaid program as hiv-aids transfusion centers and were getting paid by the government for hiv-aids

transfusion. i mean, you really have to look at this stuff to realize how bad it is. the idea that a paper-based bureaucracy can keep up with crooks in the age of blackberrys and the internet is just ludicrous. and so long before these politicians expand the current health system, they ought to be compelled to revise the current system, to quit taking money away from you to spend paying to people who are cheating the government and cheating the country. i think that gives you a sense of how big the gap is between where we are and where we noticed to be. let me just say in closing -- and i'm going to take questions -- but i want you all to understand this. your generation is now participating in the fundamental decisions about whether we remain the freest, the most productive, and the most powerful country in history. or whether we decay into a government-dominated, politician-defined,

bureaucratically-controlled mess that has no capacity to compete with china and india in the next generation. the decisions that we're making this year, next year, the year after are unbelievably important. your help this summer in making sure that everyone you know calls your congressman and your senators to tell them not to pass a giant energy tax that will crush the economy and not to pass a giant government-run health program that will crush the economy, this summer you have a chance to help change history. your help over the next year in winning the argument on your campus, winning the argument on talk radio, winning the argument in letters to the the editor, going to town hall meetings, arranging for debates on key topics, setting the stage for a 2010 election which sends a signal we want america to get back on the right track. and then through that, setting the stage for the 2012 election where we end up having once again, as with jimmy carter, ensure that liberalism is a

one-term experience. i think that's the key to us being successful over the next generation. let me, if i could, take questions. [applause] >> yes, ma'am? >> hi, my name is abbey. i'm from the university of central florida. [no audio] >> sorry. my parents own a small health insurance agency. they sell health insurance. and so i think it's really important that everybody learns all they can about health insurance because i think that's the best way to bat what we're facing in washington right no now -- the best way to combat what we're facing in washington right now. but i also wonder what you think about -- i think a lot of the problem with health insurance right now is that people want it to pay for everything, even

private health insurance. and i want to know what you think of that because i think that's why we're in this mess right now. >> well, two things. first of all, on health transformation.net, our center for health transformation has lots and lots of information on health care. and second, i think you're right. part of the reason i've begun talking about two-plus-two equals four is to try to get people to slow down and be honest about life. okay? the fact is, there is no free health insurance. if you go -- if you work for an employer and the employer provides health insurance, guess who paid for it? you did. >> yeah. >> because they don't give you health care. that's part of what you earn by being an employee. if the government runs a health insurance program, the government doesn't pay anything, you do. i mean, if they don't get the money from the taxpayers, they're going to borrow it from your generation in debt. you're then going to pay interest on the debt the rest of your life. but one way or the other, it's paid for. so this idea somehow there's this free thing out here is

fundamentally wrong. people who are engaged -- we very strongly believe in incentivized health plans and in health savings accounts and in things that give people an interest in their own health because we've learned, working with a number of different companies, that if you get people engaged in their own health and they think they have a vested interest, they take better care of themselves, they are less likely to get sick, they are better shoppers, and i think the result is that you've got -- we have -- we're in -- i think this is going to be a fundamental discussion about the nature of life with one side saying, we'll take care of you and it won't cost you anything. and then the other side saying, oh, no, in the real world, you have to be involved in your own life and you have to be involved in studying and you have to be involved in getting a job and you have to be involved in your own health and that's going to be a real argument about what kind of a country we're going to be. because a country in which you rely on somebody else to give you everything is a country in which you just gave power over your life to somebody else. because once they can give you everything, they can also take

everything away. in a country where you are self-reliant and you are capable of having a work ethic and you're capable of learning and you're capable of controlling your own money is a country where you have dramatically more freedom. i think that's going to be one of the most important debates for the next ten years. >> thank you. >> hi, my name's samuel settle, i'm from penn state. and once again, thank you very much for coming out to speak with us. i know you're a very busy man. i wonder if you might have managed to schedule any vacation time around 2012 for states like iowa, new hampshire, michigan? [applause] >> all i can tell you my limited experience in what you're referring to doesn't sound much like a vacation. my sense is you actually have to work pretty hard in those states. but it's something i'll look at in january of 2011. >> thank you. >> hi, my name's joseph hawkins,

baylor university. as we all know, one of the points in the contract with america was term limits and unfortunately we didn't get that enacted during the republican revolution. i was wondering if you still believe in term limits, and if you do, how long should they be for the house and the senate? >> yeah, i think 12-year term limits are manageable and reasonable, and i would favor -- i don't favor shorter term limits because then you have no learning curve and you end up with a lobbyist and the staff running the capitol. but i think a 12-year term limit for both the house and the senate would be more than reasonable. >> hi, mr. gingrich. again, thank you for coming out to speak to us. my name is luke. i'm from grove city college. actually, his question may have answered my question, but i think you're absolutely right about the need to paint in these bold strokes as opposed to the pale colors. but i guess as somewhat disillusioned republicans who've seen our bold colors frequently fade to pale very rapidly after elections, how do you think that we can maintain a change and not just make one? >> well, i think you should run for office. [laughter]

>> thank you. >> i'm serious. if every person in america who is griping filed for office, you know, you'd have a whole new generation of candidates. and i think that's part of the process. and i -- i'm not for -- look, i'm not for defending anybody. if you have a republican who is not doing the right thing, they ought to get beat in the primary. and for that matter, if you're in a democratic district where no republican can win, find somebody who will run in the democratic primary. but i think incumbents ought to be challenged and i think when people are unhappy, they ought to go out and challenge them. and i think the health yetion thing that can happy -- healthiest thing that can happy in a free society is for your generation to decide you're going to take your own future seriously and you're going to get directly involved in politics. and if you're legally old enough to run for office, starting with school board, city council, county commission, go run. you'll be amazed how much you change the country. [applause] yo>> hi, my name is melissa. i'm a political science student at the university of laugh i can'lafayette.i do plan to run l

office one day. i have a couple of interesting observations on health care and i wanted to get your feedback on the positives and what you think the negatives are. to go back to what you were saying earlier about h.s.a.'s, tax-free savings accounts, mainly to put for, like, doctor visits, that sort of thing, that way like you said people will shop for their health care. i mean, right now we don't really know what we're being charged at the doctor's office because it's in the hands of the insurance company. but if it's in the hands of the person, then they'll shop and that will create competition and that will lower prices. also, i wanted to see what you thought about promotion of nonprofit organizations in creating big incentives for people to give to nonprofits who have things like free clinics, that sort of thing. >> well, i think first of all that it is very much key to any future successful health system to have price and quality

information available to everyone. i think people should have the right to know price and quality for doctors, for hospitals, for any kind of health activity they're engaged in so they can make a comparative choice with real information. so i think that's very, very important. and i think the more that you directly engage in that, the better off we are. and for those of you who've ever looked around, if you go in ready to pay cash, you can very often get exactly the same procedure from exactly the same doctor for surprisingly less money. and it's really quite remarkable. then if they have to file forms, wait 90 days, go through all that stuff. so that's the first point i'd make. and i think that that would be a very useful step in the right direction, and we favor it very much. thank you. >> hi, my name is victor. i'm a freshman at penn state. first, i'd like to say it's an honor to be able to speak with you today. earlier you mentioned the time period that we're in right now is very similar to that between the reagan presidency and the carter presidency. i was wondering, was there any defining action that the youth

took in that time period in led to the reagan presidency? >> well, i think what actually happened was across the whole country, the -- there was a -- a growing sense that it just wasn't working. and it wasn't that obvious at this stage. if you go back to august of 19 1977, which was the same point for the carter presidency, it wasn't obvious that it was going to be the disaster it became. nobody predicted you'd have 13% inflation and 22% interest rates and you'd have a 444-day iranian hostage crisis and you'd have gasoline rationing with people buying gas every other day based on the last number of their car license tag. i mean, it was a real mess. and you couldn't tell that this early. what you could sense was that carter believed, much like obama, in big government. and, you know, if only we create enough departments and hire enough bureaucrats and raise enough taxes, everything will work. which is a fundamental misunderstanding of america. this -- we are not a great bureaucratic country.

we're not a country where if only i could hire another 3 million bureaucrats, things would be terrific. in fact, just the opposite. we're a country where it's entrepreneurial energy, it's small businesses, it's -- it's people out there who create the next wave of jobs in a fundamentally different model than the academic left believes in. and so a number of us -- i was a candidate in that period. a number of us felt like carter anin the end would not succeed because his models were wrong. for example, we didn't have enough gasoline so instead of encouraging exploration, they raised taxes on the oil and gas companies and they went to rationing. well, rationing turned out to be a nightmare. and -- and a good friend of mine, david boss of citizens united, was 13 that year and his father every morning would give him the screwdriver to go out and change license plates so that the car that needed gasoline had the right license plate and could, therefore, go and buy gasoline. i've told people, i thought this was a great test of whether

you're a liberal or a conservative. if you learned that the government's adopted a rule so dumb that 13-year-olds are changing license plates, you know, is the correct answer, a, to drop the rule -- in which case you're a conservative -- or, b, to hire license plate police at every gas station, in which you're a good liberal? [applause] >> hello, my name is will campbell. i'm a senior. i currently work at a business incubator. we use private, state and federal moneys to spur economic development in our country. as a conservative, i can't justify using this money, i can't justify my own job. i was wondering how you felt -- how you felt about businesses like this, business incubators and the businesses they create? >> well, of all the ways in which government intervenes, that's one of the least destructive, frankly. look, we have a very long

tradition of government cooperating to build a better future. george washington favored a national turnpike and favored building the canal around the great falls of the potomac. abraham lincoln favored building the transcontinental railroad. i don't -- you know, dwight eisenhower created the interstate highway system, which all of you drive on. i don't automatically object to government doing those things which help create a more productive future. go that sense, you know, i think that there are times and place where government ought to do it. what i want it to be, though, is real. i don't want to have make-work programs, i don't want to have people pretending to be developing new jobs. so part of the thing i'd ask you to look at in items of your own -- not your job personally, i mean, i'm not urging you to go back home and resign in protest, but -- but the real test for you as a taxpayer ought to be, is this office helping create enough new jobs to justify it? i mean, if it's not then we, frankly, should get rid of it. if it is, in fact, helping create a new generation of jobs, much as the agricultural extension agent was one of the

keys to the agricultural revolution. i mean, it was government agriculture rag extension agents who took the seed corn out of the laboratory and caught local farmers how to grow new generations of productive crops. and there's no question that that public-private partnership was a key to the most productive agriculture in history. so the question is: is it real? is it getting something positive done or is it just make-work is a that politicians ca-work sothy jobs to their supporters? >> thank you. >> i wanted to ask you what you think american -- where you think american foreign policy is going in the next four years. with the current government, we have constant criticism of the state of israel, we have a president installed who constantly criticized the intervention in iraq. he'll say stuff about honduras but not about the protests in iran. americans are in pakistan at the moment. i don't even know if obama knows what we're supposed to be doing in pakistan at the moment.

it's bizarre. so i'd like to know your thoughts on that and whether or not america's influence in the world will diminish because of a democrat government and obama himself particularly? >> well, let me say, first of all, since you're from britain, i recommend to you and everyone else who's here a book by claire berlinski so-called "why margaret thatcher matters." >> it sounds good. >> yeah. it's really worth your reading. it's a remarkable study of -- she's an american novelist who lives in istanbul. she was a graduate school in cambridge when thatcher was prime minister. and she got fascinated looking back 30 years later on what an enormous impact thatcher had on british culture and british economics. look, one of the fascinating differences between president reagan and president obama is that president reagan had a very long period to think about foreign policy and to think

about what he believed. and doing the daily radio show for a long period after he was governor, he had really thought about almost every major public policy issue and had developed a pretty firm considered opinion. i sense that president obama has a lot of sort of surface-level ideas but he hasn't thought through the next two or three layers down. and i think one of the most interesting things about the next two or three years is going to be to watch him come to grips with this. if you -- if you notice, for example, there's an article i believe in today's paper on the fact that life has gotten harder in afghanistan, not easier. that pakistan is in a relatively fragile state and that the northwest is really, really hard to deal with in pakistan. i think that we're going to find that hamas has a rather clear view of the future of israel, which is it ceases to exist, and it's not a problem of

communication. they actually know what they want, they want to wipe out israel. i think we're going to find that the iranians, having had a phony election in which the hard-liner won by having stolen enough votes, is now in a power struggle internally over how much power he's going to have. and -- but no one i know believes the iranians are not going to try to get nuclear weapons and are not pretty close to getting them. in north korea, it's clear that despite years of the world yelling at north korea, they have yeps. now, when you have a country as weak as north korea, with a government as bad as north korea, where the average height of the north korean people has shrunk by several inches through malnutrition. it's one of the most horrendous stories in public history. and the entire planet can do nothing about it. i don't feel very comfortable about our ability to secure the future. and i think what's going to happen for president obama is he's probably going to be in a position where on many different

fronts, he is simultaneously going to have to make very hard decisions. and the first may be in iran, because there's some talk -- there was an article i believe yesterday that the administration's really looking at cutting off iranian gasoline shipments because iran produces oil but it doesn't -- it actually only produces 60% of the gasoline it needs. now, i'm not sure the administration's thought through all the second and third order effects of cutting off gasoline to iran. on the other hand, if the administration throws its hands up and says there's nothing we're going to do, you may get an israeli attack on iran. so, i mean, this is all going to get much harder before it gets easier and we don't know today how president obama will deal with it. >> hello, mr. gingrich. my name is heather putnam. i go to lake forest college. one of the biggest problems on our campus is not so there are so many liberals but there's so many apathetics. and despite, you know, prominent advertising and efforts to get

the entire campus involved, it seems like my college is a small, private liberal arts college and people tend to sort of live in a bubble. it's a noncollege town. and so they don't seem to realize that the policies being enacted, while they sound good whenever they have to switch on tv, are not going to be very beneficial for them once they leave that bubble. and so i wonder if you have any suggestions about how to communicate these ideas an of wt the effects of health care and other issues will be once they come out of college in a couple years. >> well, i have two dramatically different ways of communicating it. one is at a very high level, that is to have -- there are some people who get attracted intellectually to, you know, the big debate. and, again, if you're a liberal arts college, you undoubtedly have attracted a whole bunch of people who like talking about ideas and who will stay up late at night talking about ideas.

they don't necessarily know the idea they're talking about but they love talking about it. okay? and so one level is you develop some debates on fairly big positions. you know, does the american constitution matter? you know, do our rights come from god or do they come from politicians? and you have the kind of stuff where people get engaged mentally. the second is practical direct self-interest. would you like to have a job when you graduate? if you had a job, would you like to have money to go home with you at the end of work? would you like to have a health program that actually enabled you to talk to your doctor rather than a bureaucrat? or if you look at what dr. emanuel has said, the president's advisor, who has certainly implied a willingness to consider euthanasia and then you look at the historic record of euthanasia, should down's syndrome children be at risk the government or should their lives be protected? should people who have disabilities --

[applause] you know? i mean, if you read the quote "communitarian standards" that dr. emanuel describes, it certainly sounds very foreboding and very threatening. and i think you would suddenly have people engaged in conversation and debate who would not normally be engaged in it. >> i think that kind of group formate maformat may be more ben getting people engaged. >> legitimately young people enjoy talking with each other and they have the energy to stay up until 2:00 in the morning and talk to each other and still stag to her class only 15 minutes late. it's a remarkable thing. >> thank you very much. >> thank you. >> good afternoon, my name is jerilyn. i recently graduated from hum bolhumbolt university in northen california. my question is a little bit of a followup to heather's.

after the last election, even the "huffington post" admitted that the media establishment in the u.s. was overly favorable to obama and yet after admitting it, they haven't made any changes. you've just spoken to us at length about all the reasons we should have lower taxes and not enact the new health care bill and, frankly, most of the people in this room probably already knew a lot of all of that because we're kind of political nerds. but for the great masses of the american people who might not be so interested in slogging through this messy business every day, their only -- or basically their only source of information is the liberal news establishment. obviously we have strong allies on our side like rush limbaugh, god, and the facts, but -- but even with all that, how do you see the -- the conservative movement as a whole being able to communicate our message effectively to the american people as a whole and kind of the middle, nonpolitically elite class when we have such an

establishment of media and, like, showmanship up against us where they twist our words and just sell lies all day that we can hardly combat? >> well, let me say, first of all, that i was active as a candidate during the rise of reagan and then i was a congressman for the last two years through the presidential campaign of 1980, and then i served with him for eight years in the congress when he was president. and we had -- you could argue that we had a harder time because we didn't have limbaugh, we didn't have fox news, we didn't have hannity, we didn't have the internet and so there was actually probably a greater net monopoly by abc, nbc, cbs, "the new york times" in that era than there is today. i have two practical pieces of advice for you. the first is sheer repetition. i mean, if you took all of the e-mail addresses in this room, my guess is that collectively you probably represent 60,000 or

100,000 or 200,000 people. you'd be startled how many people you can connect with. so you become the equivalent of a newspaper. and so what reagan did that was -- that was brilliant was he developed very specific ideas. the reason i talked about a 50% reduction in social security and medicare tax is you can go back home and every person who works can calculate how much they would take home next week with that kind of a tax cut. and now it begins to be person personal, and it's not nbc news or "the new york times," it's personal. if i contrast competing with china, which has zero capital gains, why don't we have zero capital gains, every investor and every venture capitalist in america can calculate what zero capital gains would be worth. now, i get their attention at a level that the "new york times" can't match. when you say that. but it does require an immense amount of persistence. and so part of the reason that reagan succeeded and part of the

reason that we succeeded with the contract with america in 1994 was that you took very big ideas and you stayed on them for two or three yearsmen years. and over a two- or three-year period it penetrated and people talk to each other and people say, you know, that's what i want. and then you got down to a fairly straightforward fight. reagan was for a tax cut. 30% cut in the income tax. that was his answer to carter's bad economy. when the average sat down and said okay, would i like to have 30% cut of my income tax? well, if it's my patriotic duty, i'll accept it. [laughter] you know? but once they got it in their brain, the left couldn't get it out. we campaigned on welfare reform and balancing the budget and cutting taxes, and people went down the checklist and said yeah, i want that, i want that, i want that. and once they got that in their head, the left couldn't get it out. so i think our challenge is, pick big enough changes that can be translated into people's lives and be prepared to talk about them until we actually pass them into law. and in that process, you'll

change the whole country. >> thank you very much. >> yes, ma'am, i think you get to be the last person. >> wow. my name is valerie pratt and give to randolph macon academy. my question is, during the carter administration, there was huge regulations put on the reprocessing of nuclear energy. now, my question is, if france can do it and they can do it effectively, why do we still have such regulations that prevent us from doing it as well? >> now, let me ask you, are you asking why the political class in america would be too stupid to match france? >> yeah. [laughter] >> that's really a hard question. [laughter] i think -- i recommend you go see barney frank and henry waxman and chris dodd -- [applause] >> thank you. >> let me go back to heather's question for one second. because i'm thrilled that you all are here. i actually don't think you're nerds, i think you're citizens. and i think being a citizen is

very, very important. we have a new novel coming out in october called "to try men's souls," which is about washington crossing the delaware on christmas day. and when you realize that the american revolution was on the verge of dying, that ought of 3 million people, washington's army was down to 2,500, and that of that 2,500, only one-third -- i mean, one-third had no boots and were marching in ice and snow and with their feet wrapped in burlap bags leaving literally a trail of blood behind. and that it's that army crossing the delaware at night in an icy storm, marching on a frozen road in a snowstorm, surprising the professional soldiers and capturing 800 of them, which is the emotional and psychological turning point of the revolutionary war. we were down literally to 2,500 people. what you're doing by taking time out of your summer, by being here learning, arguing,

thinking, talk, is you are the liflifeblood of the future of or country. it takes citizens to reinvest every generation in order to extend freedom, in order to meet the challenges of each new age and in order to develop the solutions that enable us to remain the safest, most prosperous and freest country in the world. so what you're doing really, really matters. i look forward very much to working with each and every one of you. thank you very much for being here today.

>> from the chicago public library, this is about an hour and a half. >> and now i think we're ready to begin. good evening, everyone. my name is mary demsey. it's my great pleasure to welcome you to the chicago public library for this very special program, "our histories and our stories." first let me start by thanking juliana richardson and the history makers and g.g. choza of roosevelt high school for telling these wonderful stories to us. we're delighted to have them here for this very, very special evening. of course, we're excited to have dr. henry louis gates back here at the chicago public library with rick hogan. it is an exciting night for us because the chicago public library has had the privilege of working very closely with a number of institutions this year, including the chicago history museum and the american -- the abraham lincoln

bicentennial commission to celebrate the centennial of the birth of abraham lincoln. the bicentennial of the birth of abraham lincoln. and this is one in a series of programs that we will be offering this year. as you came in, you may have seen a program guide, "land of lincoln readers." this is our adult summer reading program. our children's program is also based on abraham lincoln and his life. but our adult programs are also intended, like this one, to explore the very controversial, complex, and creative man who was abraham lincoln. tonight's program is a collaboration between the chicago public library and the abraham lincoln bicentennial commission and, of course, all of our fellow conveners. i want to thank especially eileen macovich and her team for their assistance in making tonight possible, and we very much appreciate the participation of everyone who's involved in this. as i said, please be sure to pick up your copy of the "land of lincoln reader's guide." our major cultural partner

throughout this summer is the chicago history museum. they have been a tremendous collaborator starting last spring working with the chicago bar association to present a reenactment of the lincoln-douglas debates. we were very privileged to work with the history museum on the presentation of doris kearns goodwin earlier this year with the chicago bar association. just last week we had harold holder here as well. and tonight's program with dr. henry louis gates is really one of the stars of this entire land of lincoln programming. we are delighted to have the history museum as such a strong partner of the library in so many things but never more importantly than this year in the celebration of the bicentennial of the birth of abraham lincoln. so please welcome the president of the chicago history museum, our dear friend, gary johnson. [applause]

>> thank you very much, mary demsey. i thank all of you, thank the sponsors, conveners. i'm very proud that chicago is hosting this important event. as mary demsey said, the chicago public library in particular is putting on what i think is the highest impact lincoln event of the summer. the summer reading program, when all is said and done, will involve over a million books read and reported on involving lincoln. now, that's impact. we're delighted to be part of that. chicago, by the way, was also very important for abraham lincoln himself. we can confirm 24 visits to chicago, and i suspect there were even more. and when you look at the record, chicago was the city that was the proving ground for his ambition, the place where he tested his skills in dealing with communities of different kinds than he met in downstate illinois, meeting different

kinds of political leaders. and we're very proud of the connection of chicago and abraham lincoln. and chicago has been the setting for wave after wave of lincoln events this year. since the actual day of the bicentennial. but it's a whole year. and in particular, i'd ask you to mark your calendars for october 10 of this year, because on that day, two institutions are going to open major exhibits. october 10. the newbury library will open the library of congress's exhibition on the lincoln bicentennial, "malice toward none." and at our own chicago history museum, we'll be opening two exhibitions side-by-side with a powerful theme. the first is "lincoln transformed," on the issue of slavery with treasures from the chicago history museum. secondly, i'm proud to say there will be an exhibit on lincoln's

contemporary, benito juarez, president of mexico, sometimes known as the lincoln of mexico. and some of mexico's national treasures will be here in chicago so that we can examine and compare these two great leaders. so i thank you all for being here and i look forward to a wonderful program. [applause] >> good evening. i'm congressman jesse jackson jr. as a member of the abraham lincoln -- thank you. as a member of the abraham lincoln bicentennial commission, i welcome you to this town hall meeting. thank you for being here. i'd like to thank the many organizations that worked together to convene this town hall, especially commissioner demsey and her staff. i'd also like to thank the fetzer institute of kalamazoo, michigan, for its significant support of this town hall

program. abraham lincoln's bicentennial has given rise to exciting new scholarship about our 16th president's life, leadership and legacy. the national commission town hall program entitled "lincoln's legacy: race, freedom and equality of opportunity," encourages us not only to read the latest books and watch informative documentaries, but also to talk about what we've learned. to do something to help complete the unfinished work lincoln spoke of at gettysburg. there is no civil war but great tasks that remain before us. today, the u.s. supreme court decided a case about race. two weeks from today, hearings begin on the first latina nominated to the high court, judge sonia sotomayor. tens of millions of americans lack adequate health care. too many students do not have access to an equal high-quality public education.

and americans are losing their jobs and homes, probably have personal ways of defining equality of opportunity. combine all of these issues, add your personal experience and you have a story that is not only shaped by history but helps shape history. join me now in welcoming the leaders of our town hall on our history, our stories, rick cogan, one of chicago's best writers and interviewers. [applause] >> and our very special guest, scholar, film maker and author, henry louis "skip" gates. [applause]

>> i don't want them to think that i'm a jinx of any kind, but the last time i was on this stage was as studs turkel and he had a cane. [laughter] >> and inevitably, i will have a cane. dr. gates, before we get to barack obama and sotomayor and maybe even the gay pride parade, what's your history? >> what's my history? >> yeah. >> first i want to say, i love chicago. [applause] >> i do, i really do. when i was beginning my career, i was an assistant professor at yale and i really wanted to move to chicago. and i applied for a job at the university of chicago in the english department and i didn't get it. [laughter] i never let them forget that. but i would have done anything

to live in chicago. and the crowds -- and i love this library, and isn't this a great library? give it up for the library. [applause] >> and my friend, congressman jesse jackson jr. the congressman, he calls me every once in awhile. we talk about everything. you're a good man, jesse, and i really admire you. anything i can do for you, i would. you're lucky to have them as your representative. the republicans didn't clap, did you hear that? >> there are no republicans in chicago. [laughter] >> left. and finally one more thing. the history makers, where's the wonderful person? oh, there you are. isn't that an amazing, amazing project, the history makers?

[applause] >> and i didn't plan to do this, my daughters will probably kill me, but i'd like to donate $1,000 of my honorarium to the history makers. just to help you. >> just so i don't feel like a freak, i'm not getting an honorarium. but there's another thing about the history makers. don terry, some months ago, a former colleague of mine at the "chicago tribune," did a wonderful magazine piece on that. you can probably get that -- i don't know much about computers -- through the archives too. but it's a remarkable, remarkable thing. >> oh, it is. >> the last issue of the "tribune magazine" was sunday too. i want to get to that too. >> every city should have a history maker project like this. >> i couldn't agree with you more. i could not agree with you more. and were they to have one and you -- see, you have everything on computer. this is fantastic. >> there you go. >> who is that? >> no, you asked me what? >> your history. >> i got interested in my own history, which i realized later

was african-american history, in june of 1960. and it's the day i first saw this photograph. so here's the story. it was the day that my father's father -- my father is 96 years old, ladies and gentlemen. he would have been here but he had a date. [laughter] >> my father loves women. but he is a total dog. he plays bridge six days a week and has a 70-year-old companion. so you can't beat that. [laughter] >> edward saint lawrence gates was my father's father and he died in june 1960. i was nine years old. and it was the first time i had ever stood next to a corpse, you know, went to see the viewing. and we had the funeral at kites funeral home in cumberland, maryland, which is about three hours west of washington, d.c.

and my father's a seventh son. i'm a second son. my father is very funny. >> that must be genetic. >> yeah. look, my father makes red foxx look like an undertaker. my father is very funny. so we were standing there, just my father and me, looking at my grandfather's corpse, and my grandfather looked like a white man. and this is -- i'll show you, this is his father. that's his father, who was born in 1857. and the -- and his son, this is -- that's my grandfather's baby picture. now, if he doesn't look white, i don't know what it is. >> yeah, no kidding. no kidding. >> yeah. and so we're standing there looking at him, and, i mean, my grandfather was so light complected, behind his back, we called him caspar, you know, caspar the friendly ghost.

imagine how white he was as a corpse. i thought he looked ridiculous. i didn't know what to do and i thought what i heard was my father laughing. and i thought well, this was a joke because they had made him too white. and i started to laugh and i looked up, and my father with huge tears welling down my father's face and i was mortified. because the whole colored people of cumberland, maryland, were all in this funeral home. and so i was afraid they had seen me laugh at this sacred moment. and i was so shocked at that and shocked to see my father cry that i started to cry too. and fortunately everyone was so mesmerized at my father's tears that they didn't even notice me. we buried my grandfather at the rosehill cemetery which is an episcopalian cemetery. we have always been episcopalian. we buried him and then went back to the family home. and this woman bought cash -- she paid cash for the house in 1870. an all-white neighborhood. we still own the house.

>> did you -- that was not the first time you'd ever seen this picture, was it? >> we went back to the gates family home and my father took my brother and me upstairs. now, i don't know about you, but when i was growing up, you didn't go upstairs -- i didn't know my grandparents had an upstairs, they had a bedroom. you wouldn't go to your grandparents bedroom. you wouldn't sit on the bed. >> sure. >> so we go up, it was like going to mars, seeing the upstairs of my grandparents' house. and my father took us -- they had a sun porch right off their bedroom. and he took all these bank ledgers. my grandfather and my great-grandfather had a chimney sweep and janitorial business, and my grandfather had all these bank ledgers which my father was pulling. and i didn't know what they were. turned out they were scrapbooks, and they were full. war casualties from world war ii, all kinds of stuff. so, you know, all of this is unfolding. we had just buried my grandfather.

and my father stops and says -- he calls me boy. he still calls me boy. he said, boy, this is what i wanted you to see. my brother is five years old. he's chief of oral surgery at bronx hospital, a very distinguished surgeon. and we look down, and it's the obituary, january 6, 1888, of the "cumberland evening times," cumberland, maryland. and it says, "died this day, jane gates, an estimable colored woman." an estimable colored woman. and then he wanted us to read it. and then he pulled out the picture, and as you can see, she was a midwife. that's her uniform. and her -- she had five children. they were all fathered by the same man but she would never reveal who that man was. but he was a white man, obviously, and we now know from my d.n.a. that he was irish because i have something called

the uneal haplotype. so i'm descendant from irish. so give it up. you've heard of the black irish? well, this is it. and the very next day -- the very next day, i got out the composition book and i went downstairs in our house and i asked my mother what her mother's name was, when she was born and her mother and her mother, and i did that with my father. and since that day, i have been obsessed with my own family tree and with the collective family tree of the african-american people. and that's a true story. >> wow, that's interesting. the thing that strikes me about that story is in many ways you were very, very lucky, because there is this photograph when many, many, as you well know, other africans, there's no kind of record, there's maybe a name. so you saw it in your fabulous work for television, there's maybe a name, there's maybe a hint. is it difficult when you are exploring the past of someone, trying to get the history when

the record is absolutely illusive? >> oh, it's horrible. it's horribly difficult. but there are certain tricks. so that's why now i've written two books. >> right. >> "in search of men," and "in search of our roots," which is -- both of them are outgrowths of my african-american life series. our people -- for those of you who don't think they were slaves, you could -- a slave could call themselves george washington madison johnson jones, but the law didn't call him or her anything. >> right. >> because they weren't real human beings. that was a fiction that the law claimed so that our people who -- all of us are descendant from slaves, the only question is when your slave ancestors became free. i've known african-americans that say, my people were never slaves. like rubbish. there are three big myths.

the three big myths in african-american genology. the first one is my grandmother was a native american cherokee. how many african-americans in this room believe that you descend from a native american? now, be honest. raise your hand. yeah. well, none of you-all have native american in you. [laughter] but do you know what? if we did the d.n.a. of all the black players in the nba, 30% of the black men in this room, 30% of all black men like me can trace their ancestry to a white man who impregnated a black woman in the civil war. isn't that amazing? that's one out of three. that's one out of three. but rather than deal with the fact of in forced slavery -- in forced sexuality under slavery, at best -- there were a few exceptions of rape at worst -- we fantasized this native american mythical -- my grandmother had high cheek bones and straight black hair. every negro i know makes that claim. hair down to her behind. you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

it's like total rubbish. it just didn't happen. less than 5% of the american people have one drop of native american ancestry. the other myth, large myth, is that i'm -- nobody in my family was a slave. but we were all slaves, all descended from slaves. some of our ancestors were freed earlier than others, but 95% of our ancestors were only freed not by the emancipation proclamation. the emancipation proclamation we figure most generously freed about 500,000 of the 3.9 million slaves. it was the 13th amendment that freed the slaves and was finally ratified in december of 1865. and that abolished the institution of slavery. so the 1870 census is where all of our ancestors appear for the first time with two names, with a first name and a suriname. so you start with you and you work backwards every ten years trying to trace your ancestors through the censuses to get to

1870. this is like the sound barrier. remember "star trek?" remember there was the edge of the universe and the captain was always trying to penetrate? that for us -- that's the edge of the universe for black people in genology. then what you do, you look -- let's take oprah winfrey. >> sure. >> so we knew we could find constantine winfrey, which we knew was oprah winfrey's great-great-grandfather living in mississippi in 1870. so then we went to the 1860 census, where, remember, slaves don't have any names. but we looked for the white people in the same county who owned slaves. and then you look at the slave schedule. and constantine winfrey was 31 in 1870. we looked for a winfrey who was white who has a slave, a male in 1860 who was 21. and chances are, that was the same guy. well, it turns out that there was a white man named absalem winfrey, he had a 21-year-old back male slave, and he's living

next door in 1870 to constantine winfrey. looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it's a duck. what then you look for, estate records for absalem winfrey. because the exception to what i said earlier to the slaves not having a name is let's say that you had 50 slaves in 1850 and you had five children and you wanted to distribute your estate equally among your children. you would then file the proper papers to do that and you would have to list the slaves by their first name. >> gotcha. .. the first male black astronaut, we found her grandfather that way in 1852 in the papers of a white man who owned him. it's just -- it's incredibly lucky. >> how do you feel when you can't do it, though?

>> it's very, very frustrating. >> yeah. >> quincy jones. i love quincy jones. quincy jones is descended from a white man named lenier who impregnated a black woman 15 years after slavery ended. and it's a very prominent family. you're very lucky to be a lenier because they have a very narrow because they have a very narrow trunk on the family tree. is descended from the same. and quincy on his white side -- we did this for him -- can trace his ancestry back to the 13th century in england to one of the kings of england. but on his african-american si side, we could only go back to just before the civil war. so it's tremendously, tremendously frustrating. i was very lucky because we had jobbie sury, who's a brilliant genologist, who works out in provo, utah, who works with the mormormons.

they're the for most experts on genology. i love the genology research and the family history library is just a rush for me every time i go there. and we've -- we've filmed there. and they did my family tree, which is part of african-american life 1 and 2, and because jane gates, the gates branch of the family -- well, here, i can show this to you. she was a slave until 1865. but on my other branches, they were able to -- i'll show you my family tree. just bear with me for a moment. they were able to find three sets of my four great-grandparents. and it's very hard to see, but that's me right at the bottom, number one. and at the top are three sets of my fourt pour great-grandparent. and they were all free. two sets were free by 1776, free negroes, and the third set on my father's mother's side, jill and sarah bruce, were freed in 1823

by a white man named abraham van meter. and we have his will. and i didn't know any of this. and they -- all of these sets of my family lived 30 miles from where i was born and where i grew up. and they were right there, all my roots buried in these court records. and the mormons gave me my family back. it's one of the most incredible things that ever happened to me. and one of my four great-grand fairntgreat-grandparents, john d redmond, fought in the great revolution. and some fought in the civil war. so i was so amazed to find that i had a patriot ancestor that i started a project at harvard when we are going through -- there were 80,000 pension applications for soldiers from the continental army, and all you do is match the names against the federal census. federal censuses started in this country, as you know, of course, in 1790. and censuses always listed if a person is black or not.

so we are matching these -- i run the voice institute at harvard. i've been very lucky to be able to do that. we have this project there under the direction of genologist jane yale and we're matching all those 80,000 pension applications to the censuses. and already she's found 5,000 black men who fought in the american revolution. isn't that a great thing? >> wow. >> isn't that a great thing? >> yeah. what strikes me in many ways, and your television work has been so powerful, and to watch, just as you did here, some of those people learn immediately what their past was like. >> and they cry. >> yeah. well, with good reason i think. >> yeah, i cried actually. >> it doesn't matter to most people, do you think, whether the history is a proud history or a criminal history. >> no. >> just the knowing is all that matters. >> absolutely. yeah, some people say -- $ >> i don't want to know. >> -- i want to know. >> i want to live with this cherokee long-haired fantasy.

[laughter] $ >> and i asked a couple of prominent african-americans who said they didn't want to know. >> really? >> yeah. my friend -- i admire colin powell tremendously, and one night i had sent him a letter, and i got an e-mail from general powell, 7:22 -- i kept these -- 7:22 p.m. saying i'd be delighted to be in what became african-american lives 1. 7:26 i got another one and it looked and it said, i've changed my mind, i have enough cousins already. [laughter] but i don't understand that. i think to have -- there was a documentary in 1968 that bill cosby narrated my senior in high school. it's called "black history: lost, stolen or something else." and it was the first time i had seen any documentary on african-american history, what we now call african-american history. and since then, i have been just hooked. i want to know all i can about the african-american past, whether it's good, bad or indifferent.

i just want to know. and i think most of us are that way. >> yeah. but i also -- there are a few people, though, and i think that's the interesting thing about history, written, oral, whatever kind, many people manufacture their own histories. >> oh, sure. >> from pieces of truth. and the history to satisfy them or satisfy their face on the planet. >> but when you're starting to do your family tree, the first thing that you do is go home and interview everybody. everybody who claims they have a story, just -- write it down. do not challenge anybody, just write it down before they die. that's the most important thing. start with the oldest persons, for obvious reasons. and then systematically investigate using census records, et cetera, et cetera. and you'll find often that there's a part of the truth. >> it's a wonderful puzzle, in a sense, then. >> yeah, it gets transformed in the telling. and you know that parlor game, when i whisper to you and you whisper. >> sure. >> imagine that over the generations. and in my mother's family, they'd say well, the way i heard tell it, so and so and then the cherokee and then this and

george washington and all of these stories, none of which are true. but they're fascinating and they are part of the lore. my cousin, we were raised to belief that the wife man who fathered jane gates' children was named samuel brady, who was irish, and who because my great-grandfather, his obituary said he was born at brady junction, which was brady farm. and that was the story. well, when i was doing african-american lives, we tracked -- we put an ad in all these gen geology web sites sayg that pbs was doing a documentary of descendants of samuel brady. what we didn't say was it was about the black descendants, namely me. and two guys answered this ad. they lived in california. they were first cousins, direct male descendants of samuel brady. so my fellow executive producer said these guys showed up, what do we do. and i said we've got to tell them the truth. so they loved it. [no audio] >> i want to be

their cousin too. so we did a d.n.a. test. we swabbed their cheeks and my cheeks. and the a doctor at the university of chicago, dr. rick citles, who founded african d.n.a. -- africanancestry.com. and he revealed the results. he said here's the y d.n.a. which you inherited from your father. you pass down the y d.n.a. father to son. and the other you get from your mother and it's also identical. these are genetic fingerprints so you can use them forensically to track your ancestors. and he said on camera in front of 20 million people, you have absolutely nothing in common with samuel brady or samuel brady's descendants. so i then had to go and tell my father, who at the time was 91, and my great aunt helen, who was

89, and i said, aunt helen, daddy, i told them about the d.n.a. and they said yeah, yeah, yeah, what's the bottom line? and the bottom line is we are not bradies. and my aunt helen told dr. rick kittles and the d.n.a. establishment where they could put that result. she said, i have been a brady 89 years and i am still a brady and i'm going to die a brady. and i love that, because they're parallel narratives and we need to preserve all the narratives. >> this has nothing to do with anything but how -- how old were your dad's companion when he was only 91? 40? 50? [laughter] i want to meet your dad. i don't know about the rest of you. the importance of telling history, in laying it down and -- and discovering the d.n.a., then what -- what is one supposed to do with that? do you know what i mean? >> well, for me, it's just incrediblely satisfying.

>> yeah. >> it marriag helps me to undero some extent why i am who i am. my mother used to say, you come from people. you come from people. and i didn't know what that meant. and she knew some of this. like my great uncle clifford was put on a stamp. and he was the first black man admitted to the bar in the state of west virginia and he cofounded the niagara movement and he had his own newspaper for 37 years in martinsburg, west virginia. and i knew about him. we were raised to know about him. but i didn't know about all of these other ancestors, but she knew that we came from a long line of free negroes who owned property. because in the state of virginia -- remember, west virginia was in virginia until 1860. mine, they were the same state until 1863. if your master emancipated you, they had to give you land.

they end up inheriting the estate and 1,000 acres of land. the land is 20 miles from my home in west virginia. so it's very satisfying just to know. and my brother and i were inducted -- and my brother's son inducted into the sons of the american revolution because they found john redmon who had fought. and it was really funny, when we went down to texas to be inducted, we walked into this -- $ [laughter] $ i'm telling you, this was wild. it was their annual convention. everybody was dressed up, you know, like a patriot. >> was there any anxiety before taking this? [laughter] do you fear you're being set up for something? >> when we walked into this room, it was the whitest group of people. >> i can imagine. >> and my brother is really funny. he looked at me and said, are you sure we want to do this? [laughter] $ and so i gave the -- pbs was

filming the induction ceremony. and when i accepted our membership on behalf of john redmon, my fourth great-grandfather, i announced the project i just told you-all about, the black patriots. and he said, my brother, in a year, we're going to find so many black patriots using this method that in a year, this room is going to look just like harlem. [laughter] and nobody laughed. nobody. [laughter] $ i said, i was just joking. i was just joking. don't kick me out. [laughter] $ but the main thing is that our history was systematically stripped from us. >> sure. sure. >> and that's why i want every black person in america to do their family tree. we are developing at the duboise institute -- and, congressman, we're going to be talking about this, because i want some money, congressman. [laughter]

we want to reform -- when jesse was growing up, and i'm considerably older, but when i was growing up, the blackest thing you could ever be was an educated woman or an educated man. and something terrible, something terrible has happened to a large segment of the african-american community. because for too many of us, getting straight a's is white, speaking standard english is white, succeeding is white. what's that? if bull connor and george wallace had been sitting around in 1963 and said, well, you know, king and them are going to take over. what evil germ could we plant among the -- among them to let them self-destruct. they couldn't have come up with a more sin cali plot than to turn striving and learning and achievement into something not black. the blackest thing you could ever be. [applause]

the black as thing you could be is educated. as slaves, we had to sleep -- steal a little learning from the white man. we would defer gratification because we believed in the future. we believe that we could sacrifice and our kids would go to how or four more house. those for the historically white schools. since the onset of affirmative- action which starts with linda johnson but richard nixon. the black community is bifurcated. we have the largest black middle class in history, which has quad renewablrenewablehasquadrupled n dr. king was so brutally assassinated, but when you look

at the percentage of black children looking at or near the poverty line the day dr. king was killed, if i'm remembering correctly, it was about 37%. and if i'm remembering correctly, today it's about 35%. and it's amazing. no model predicted this outcome. and we need -- my colleagues and i at harvard are trying to develop a curriculum. when we go into inner city schools and we change the way we teach science and history, the way we teach science, we go in -- if you and i walked in and said today's lesson is watching helix and d.n.a., the kids would say get out of here. but we walk in, we hold up a cotton swab and said everybody in this class is going to swab their cheeks and we're going to send it off to a laboratory in arizona and in six weeks, we're going to be able to tell what you tribe you came from, your ancestor, and what percentage of european and native american and african ancestry that you have. and while we wait for the results, we're going to teach you what d.n.a. is and what double helix is and what base pairs are, et cetera.

and while we -- we go over to the history class and we say, we're going to teach the history of the slave trade to the same group of people, how africans were disbursed from africa, 12.5 million shipped to the new world between 1514 and 1867. curiously enough, only about 450,000 were shipped to the united states. all of the rest of the africans came to the new world were shipped to the caribbean and to south america. isn't that amazing? 35 million african-americans are all descended from those 450,000 people. and then when the results come back, each person's going to -- in the class is going to do a power point on where their ethnic ancestry came from in africa or on the slave trade. we want to revolutionize the way we treat science to inner city black and brown kids and history in the inner city black and brown kids. and when we do that -- $ >> well, i, for one, would be all over that. and as you know and as the

congressman knows, the problems are a little deeper than that. i remember charles osgood and i once went in a classroom at farin school, which was at about 50th and state street across from that horrific robert taylor homes, we spent a couple weeks in a second grade slas roo clasm there. and at the end of that time, seven little kids, seven beautiful, undamaged so far, for a present for us, were told to draw something they wanted to see in the future. and one little kid grew, like, a crude kind of spaceship and another very shrewd kid drew something like all green and i said, what is that, is that a garden? and he said, no, that's money. [laughter] $ i wonder what that guy's doing now. but the most mysterious thing and haunting thing was a little girl drew a tree. and we were saying what is it, honey, is it a magic tree? what kind of tree is this? and he said, no, just a tree. and we moved to the next kid. and walking out the door, charlie and i said to each other, i said, what do you think

of the tree one, what was that about? and we walked out the door of that building and we looked around and there was no tree. there was -- her life was walking across a crack filled, condom-filled empty lot to her horrifying place in the taylor homes where she had to sleep on a -- on the 14th floor, 7th floor, i said naively, why are the mattresses not on the bed in here. and there's a lot of shooting at night. i don't want my babies to be killed. that kind of thing. and i wonder, i want to get to lincoln, what in god's name would lincoln -- as complex intentions, what would he think, if you can even imagine if he walked back now and was sat down in the middle of boston, or the middle of inglewood? would it break his heart? >> well, lincoln was very complex. >> yeah, i know. yeah, yeah, but -- $ >> the tree strands, what i tried to do to

some extent in my documentary more explicitly in my book "lincoln on race and slavery" was to read everything lincoln said about black people, about slavery, the colonization, and then separate it into subcategories. because there are three separate discourses lincoln had about what we would call race. one was equality. they didn't think black people were equal to white people. the answer is no. the second is slavery. was he opposed to slavery? he was unalterably oppos opposeo slavery. but being opposed doesn't mean you like black people. that's the confusion we have had. the third is called colonization. what's comization? shipping the newly freed slaves back to africa. he was consistently opposed to slave rim. and he gets all the props in the world for that.

he reluctantly, or slowly i should say, came to respect some black people as potential intellectual equals. and two things happened to change his mind. lincoln was opposed to letting black people fight. i mean, frederick douglas and all the abolitionists pounded on the white house for years. and it was only the fact that the north was losing to the south and the fact that lincoln was giving them both -- excuse me, the winning case more on how the founders used black soldiers in the american revolution. and he was very much impressed by the founders and precedent as a lawyer. >> sure. yeah. >> and he met frederick douglas. and he had never met an intellectual equal in black face, as it were. he had never met anybody. he knew a few. you know, he knew billy the barber in springfield. but that's not a relationship of equals. he had a val laet in washingtona very good man that he cared

about. but that's not frederick douglas. and he blew his mind. and he looked him in the eye, he was a towering intelligent inte. the last speech that lincoln gave, we forget that the emancipation proclamation included a provision that black men could fight in the civil war. and he -- lincoln believed, he called them his black warriors and he believed that the tide of the war turned because of his black warriors. so in the last speech that he gave april 11, 1865, at the white house, comes out on the ball corner, the north had won, balcony, the north had won. and many it, he says all the appropriate things. but he says he's thinking about doing something which we would say was revolutionary. he's thinking about asking congress to allow his 200,000 black warriors -- this is a direct quote -- "my 200,000

black warriors and the very intelligent negroes to vote." now, there were 4.4 million black people in the united states when he gave that speech. so that's 20 200,001. i guess the very intelligent negro was frederick douglas. that's 2 million black men who would not have had the right to vote. ironically, as kyl westburg knows, ironically, who's in the audience, who's standing on the grounds of the white house when he gives the speech -- the speech is revolutionary -- it sounds -- it doesn't sound revolutionary to us but it was the first time that a president of the united states abdicated any black man have the right to vote. and who's standing on the ground? john wilkes booth. and he said, that's it, that means nigger equality, and i'm going to run him through. and four days later, he killed abraham lincoln. so literally, abraham lincoln gave his life for black

suffrage. >> that question of mine was idiotic in terms of what you just said. >> no, just let me finish. >> okay. >> i'm sorry. i'm giving -- $ >> i called myself an idiot an. >> no, no, no. it's a good question. because those 2 million black men who couldn't vote, there's scholarly debate about whether lincoln ever really changed his mind about shipping them back to africa. and i think that lincoln would not have been surprised that, you know, given the fact that he thought there were only 200,000 black warriors and a few black people anyway, i think he would have thought that there would be a bi furcation, which is what happened. so i think he would be more shocked that there's a black man as president. >> yeah, i bet he would. >> because it never occurred to lincoln -- i mean, he came to admire frederick douglas. they had only met three or four times. it's not like they were hang out and slapping fives. he never invited douglas to have -- lincoln never had dinner with a black person.

ever. >> you know, one. thingone of the thingsthat thisu said we forget that lincoln did this, we forget this last speech. part of the problem -- and i'll be the first to admit -- there's much i don't know. it's not that i've forgotten this sort of peripheral way that lincoln was covered in whatever grade i was taught abraham lincoln and didn't pursue it. that strikes me as -- as -- as scary, that lincoln the myth is what's taught. >> well, ironically, african-americans were as complicit in the creation of the myth as lincoln as the -- the philosopher king of race relations. >> yeah, right. >> and the reason is we needed a great white man to beat up on the lesser more racist white men by the turn of the century. you see, we think that jim crowe was around forever but jim crowe was really created in the 1890's. civil war was 1865. reconstruction is 1866-11987.

then a period of redemption. and with redemption, the south rises again. by the 1809's, all these black men have risen and plessy v. ferguson. so bookie t. washington and everybody else virtually create the myth of lincoln as the ultimate pure white man because they wanted to say, you guys have fallen away from the ultimate president, the greatest president. frederick douglas at the dedication of a memorial in 1876 said lincoln was the white man's president. president grant was there, the whole supreme court, the whole cabinet. it was the first monument dedicated in memory of abraham lincoln and it was funded entirely by ex-slaves. it's the first time a black man had an audience like that. and what's douglas do?

douglas said, from beginning to end, abraham lincoln was the white man's president. what he did in terms of the slaves was to benefit white men. so it was -- they were shocked. and douglas did not -- douglas went on at other times to say lincoln was a great man, et cetera, et cetera, and he said it in that speech. but even reprinted that speech in the last two editions of his autobiography. so how he really felt. it was really nuanced but he wanted people to know that lincoln opposed slavery not because he liked black people -- i was ready to believe abraham lincoln loved black people -- it was because he thought it created unfair advantage to white men who owned slaves in the marketplace. so slavery discriminated against white -- what we call white working-class people. like his father. and his father had to leave kentucky because he couldn't compete in the marketplace. he goes to indiana and then illinois. so the truth about lincoln makes him more fascinating to me. more of a hero because he

overcame his own racism. and lincoln was a racist at the beginning of his career. i mean, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck. he used the n-word. callehe called jokes. but then he moved. and who knows if lincoln had lived how much further he had had moved? >> sure. >> but he was basically john brown by the end of his life compared to what he was when he was fighting -- when he was debating stephen douglas in this great state in 1858. so i find him more fascinating. and the first -- the very first scene that i shot for -- in "looking for lincoln" was at walter peyton charter school in kyl westbrook's class. and we have some of the class members here. and he -- i want you to stand up. give it up to this young brother right here. stand up.

and i was nervous about that. i had just interviewed lerome bettis. and he thinks lincoln is the biggest racist in the whole white world. and i admire him very much but i gave him his say in the -- in the film. or, actually, i went to your class first and then i did lerome bettis. and kyl, what you did for me and your students -- and two of whom i gather, at least, are here -- and two of the people you can see in the film, they were both white and both women and one of them said, it just makes me like him more. it makes -- to understand his complexity makes me admire him more, that he couldn't -- and you saw it in the trailer. that he couldn't be john brown and be elected president of the united states. that he had to make certain compromises. he had to move through it. and i thought, wow, and these kids know the truth about lincoln and still admire lincoln.

that is what i wanted to do. i learned that from you. i appreciate it. [applause] >> we could talk for hours, but i will ask one last question and open it up for questions from the students. you said that lincoln would be terribly surprised the barack obama would be present. >> he would die all over again. >> i did not think that america would like barack obama, no matter how great i think he is. the president knows this because he reminded me of it. i supported hillary clinton at the beginning because hillary clinton is a very good friend of mine and the president clinton. i'm a very loyal person. dmire barack obama. i had had the first party for barack obama when he was running for the senate right after his great speech at the convention

on martha's vineyard. >> right. >> and it's a big whitehouse that my familwhite housethat my. and i said, senator, welcome to the white house. and everybody cracked up. oprah had this great party and invited, what my daddy calls, all the big negroes and one little academic, me, to go out there a couple of septembers ago. and she seated me across from him. there were like 200 people there. and i admire him. i didn't know him when he was at harvard but i remember when he was elected president of the law review. i was really proud of him. i didn't know how to say his name but i was really proud of him. but it was iowa. i went to sleep waiting for the iowa results. i was living out at stanford on iis ais he bat cal. sabbatical. and i always watch leno, now conan. and i woke up and he was giving that victory speech. and do you know what it made me feel like?

like what bobby kennedy's speeches used to make me feel like. and i jumped out of bed. i didn't want to miss t. it was. that was one of the truly great speeches. everybody talks about the convention speech and the acceptance speech but that iowa speech was truly great. so i didn't want to leave hillary, not -- i didn't work for her. i'm an ack item i can and i'm also the editor-in-chief of theroot.com, owned by "the washington post." so i couldn't really be active in the campaign. but i was rooghtd for the rootie brother, i wanted him to win. i didn't allow myself to celebrate until 11:01 on election night when wolf blitzer said, it's official, you know, he's president of the united states. [laughter] $ i jumpei jumped up. you know, you never know what white people are going to do. everybody black knows that.

i didn't know if they were going to vote for the brother or not. [laughter] >> my portion's done. i want to invite some people up here. we could talk forever. you're a fascinating guy. book buy the books, buy the stuff he did for tv. >> buy many of the books. >> you'll see, there are many books out there. my last question is, has your father ever met oprah winfrey? >> no. no. but he loves her. >> yeah. >> no. >> she could be your new step-mom. >> my mother used to tell me -- god rest her soul -- oprah started in baltimore. we're close. cumberland is three hours west of washington, d.c. all of our cable -- yuppies think it was invented for chicago and manhattan. he was invented for eastern maryland, western maryland and eastern pennsylvania in 1940 and 1950. so we always had able. that's the only way -- i lived in the allegheny mountains and

there was no antenna big enough. so all our tv programs came from d.c. and baltimore. and when i was off at yale, i guess i was teaching at that time. my mother used to talk about this black woman named oprah. and i had never heard of anybody named oprah. and i said mom, what are you trying to say. what kind of name is oprah? oprah what? and she said, this woman is a genius. and she was right. oprah winfrey is one of my -- i admire her so much. she's one of my heroes. she's a great person. >> one of my great heroes and one of the great historians in this city, i want to acknowledge my buddy tim black is here. >> oh, that's great. [applause] $ $ >> a great man. >> you know, i put mr. black in a film. i -- i did a film on me,, behind the color line. and one hour is about chicago. i made the last documentary in

the robert taylor homes right before they tore them down. i put mr. black in the film. you're lucky to have him in your community. >> he's a great man. i'd like to welcome first to the microphone, madeleine schwartz. she was in this cool guys class at walter peyton high that you helped film. madeleine? >> hi. >> how are you? >> i'm good. >> please. >> you're all dressed up tonight, man. not like high school. $ >> well, i was just wondering, have you, in terms of just race, have you both as an academic and just socially noticed a difference in the way that people talk about race and discuss it, like i said, academically and socially? >> yes, i think that's a good question. i think that we're -- with a black man and woman in the white house, you have to talk about race more openly just by definition than we ever have before. though it's still -- we have a long way to go because we still

comport race with class. for example, i'm a product of affirmative action. i went to yale in september 1969. 96 black kids. i was one of 96 black kids to enter yale that year. class of 1966 at yale had six. what was there a genetic blip in the race that all of a sudden there were 90 smart black people? of course not. yale and historically institutions had race quotas. and my father is working class. he worked two jobs, worked the paper mill in the day, was a janitor in the evening. so i wouldn't even have had the class -- no matter how intelligent i may or may not be, i wouldn't have had the class profile within the race. you couldn't just show up at white institutions. you had to be prescreened. everybody black in here knows what i'm talking about. rosa parks -- if you believe rosa parks is just some tired, poor black lady who spontaneously sat down on that bus? there's a bridge that i'll sell

you that connects brooklyn to manhattan. rosa parks was very well educated. she looked the part. she wasn't too dark. she had a certain text you're toutexture hair.she had been trn nonviolation. give me a break. claclaudette colvin did spontaneously sit down. there were high stakes. class and race have always been inflated. and no one was more clear about that than black people within the race. why should my two daughters, who were born at yale new haven hospital, raised on the campus of yale, educated at the finest private schools in the united states, why should they benefit from affirmative action? i think we should introduce -- congressman, i think we should introduce a class element in affirmative action. and i think it should apply to

poor white people, poor brown people, poor yellow people, poor red people -- poor people. my kids are going to get i into college. we need to start -- be more nuanced in how we think about it. and also it will make affirmative action more positive. i grew up with poor white people in the hills of west virginia. poverty is colorblind. and the culture of poverty is colorblind. same kind of dysfunction, obesity, pregnancy, out-of-wedlock, body abuse, spousal abuse. it is the same culture that we see among inner city poor black people in rural appalachian white people. ..$. no amount of historical,

romantic wishful thinking is going to change that. we need a history of america taught in our textbooks like kyle is doing with lincoln, and those guys will survive. thomas jefferson was still a great man, he just was wrong about black people. no matter how many of sally

hamings's children he fathered. i think -- sally hemings's children he fathered. i think that barack in the white house can do a lot to continue that, and also the browning of america -- there are so many brown people here now. when we were growing up, race was black and white, and now race is infinitely more complicated. much more nuanced. it's brown, it's red, it's yellow, it's -- it's fascinating. it's a great time, i think, to be a person of color, and a great time to be confronting the historical problems of race and racism and economic exploitation in america if only we have the courage squarely to face it. thank you. >> well put. stephanie jamelo is another student. i'm going to ask you a question.

get up there. what was that -- >> thanks. >> yeah, remember you're on television, don't be shy. >> no. >> this could be your big moment. >> he sounds like a very cool teacher. he's going to be up here in a second. having dr. gates in the room, did it change in any way, the way you and your friend talk about race? >> our class had had a few prefatory discussions about lincoln -- >> nothing could quite prepare you for this. >> no, but i think it made everyone think about their answer a little bit more -- you know, going to class at 9:30 in the morning, no one's really on the top of their game but -- so you know, you can kind of throw out an answer there to get five, but with professor gates there i think everyone really sat down and thought truly what they thought about lincoln. it was -- it was no more that they had to have a generic

answer -- you know, that lincoln was a great president, he did what no one else could do, people kind of had the opportunity to -- you know, we had a bunch of reading material, we -- dr. gates talked to us about the different issues surrounding lincoln, and we as a class kind of learned for the first time that it was ok to not just see lincoln as a hero of the black people -- that he might, you know, had been something different and he's still just as prntd to history but -- just as important to history but -- you know, lincoln isn't just what everyone paints him out to be. >> that's great. where do you go to school now? >> i go to washington university in st. louis. >> good for you, good for you, good for you. thanks. >> ok. now, obviously, the greatest teacher on the planet, kyle, coming up here. >> my man. >> and you sense it from dr. gates, am i getting it just from you, two, and these bright students, you've got to make history exciting to sell it,

don't you? >> absolutely, and i think part of the power of what you said tonight in your work has been the way in which you've made history personal. i think that's a theme that sort of runs throughout this evening, is the way in which all of our lives intersect with history, and part of, i feel like, our task as teachers and as educators to help students realize the way in which all of our personal stories are connected with history, even if it isn't such that i have an ancestor that fought in the american revolution, there is still something about my history and about my story that reaches back to that time period. and i don't think we do as good a job as we should as educators in helping students to connect their stories -- their stories to history and to the broader history that is not just this collection of facts and dates and things that you sort of talk about that just sort of flew

over your head. >> yeah, right. >> we don't do that enough, i think. >> that's well put. >> i agree. >> thank you. >> i -- >> secretary of education, congressman jackson, when you get to the white house. >> i had some good history teachers, but not anybody as good as kyle -- in fact, he's inspired me so much i'm going to let my hair grow. >> my pal, james grossman is the vice president of research and education at the newbury library on the show sunday and we had a marvelous time talking about how exciting history can be. jim, you're a really smart guy. what did you think of this conversation? >> the first thing i think is that when i came to kyle's class, i don't think you took two days to have them prepare for me, so -- when we talk here about status -- i also want to remind nearly everybody here

that the kind of research that we're talking about, genio logical research, you have to -- ad@ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rto -- >> yes. >> and that's what we often don't get, especially the kind of history that rick was talking about, and the complexity for lincoln in terms of thinking about what lincoln would have done are in some ways about values that competing values that we all think are good, so i

would be curious. how many of you think that after the civil war healing was important, that that should be a high priority, is healing. how many think that justice was important? what people often don't think about is that after the civil war and after lots of wars healing and justice can be competing interests. you and i have read a lot of stuff, our mutual friend. i'm curious, as much lincoln as you have read, how do you think he would have approached that conflict between healing on the one hand and justice on the other? >> i think it's a great question. >> thank you. >> i think that -- you know, i don't -- we're all raised to think that had lincoln lived, everything would have been different. had lincoln lived, had lincoln lived -- certainly, lincoln wanted to reconcile -- forgive

and bring the south back into the union, but i think that would have been at the expense of black rights. >> uh-huh. >> and i don't think it was an accident that he only advocated those 200,000. i think he was willing to sacrifice -- this is heresy to a friend of mine like harold holzer. if he were here he would jump up on the stage and like beat me with my cane but i don't think he was there -- there were 200,000 black warriors and there were these very intelligent negroes, maybe the 400,000 free negroes, maybe at most, and these other people, i don't think he knew what to do with them -- the idea -- think about, how are you going to absorb into society peacefully 3.9 million slaves overnight? that is a daunting task for barack obama, abraham lincoln, george -- anybody, many people wanted to ship these people back to either panama, or to haiti, or to west africa -- when i say

"back," they were all born in the united states. do you know that -- so there was no back to it. they were americans. 75% of all of our african ancestors had arrived in this country by the day thomas jefferson wrote the declaration of independence, and by 1820, 99.9% of all the african slaves that came through the united states had been here. we are an american people of african descent but lincoln for a long time had this that we were determined -- a bit like the government in world war ii taking the japanese americans and saying you're more japanese than american no matter if they had been here for 100 years and we're going to put you in these concentration camps. i think as the tensions between a reconciled south and north emerged, and they would have emerged as they did anyway, i believe that the commitment to black rights would have eroded

even -- or just as quickly as it eroded anyway -- if there was a commitment to black rights more or less for 10 years and then reconstruction ended. the freest time in our people's history was the 10 years between 1866 and 1876. so i think we're always at the bottom of the totem pole. our rights are the most  dispensable. justice for some is not justice for all. and when they have to decide who the "some" is, we -- our people collectively have not been in that some, and i don't think had lincoln lived it would have been significantly different. i hope that i'm wrong. the fantasy that the great emancipator would have integrated all these ex-slaves into the economy and the society and voting -- i just don't see it happening. i think lodgistically it would have been extraordinarily -- i think logistleally it would have been extraordinarily difficult to pull off and look at history

-- we're still trying to integrate the descendants of the slaves into the american society. still. >> i think this gets back, then, to the theme of [inaudible] about how the stories that we tell about history then affect history going forward because what happened then was that what was done during and after reconstruction became a story of healing, which is a good thing -- in other words, the notion that healing, which is warm and fuzzy, was what we did without people also seeing that healing required injustice. so the justice part got thrown out. >> the healing of white america. >> exactly, exactly. >> by the turn of the century -- by the centennial of lincoln's birth -- we just celebrated in february the bicentennial. at the centennial, slavery had been so deeply buried in the american memory -- the collective memory -- the american historical imagination

that w.e.b. dubois, the hero of so many black intellectuals and his contemporaries had to demand that lincoln be remembered as the man who freed the slaves. because people were embarrassed by that in 1909. it wasn't about lincoln the great emanc parent, it was the man who saved the union, and that shift was a very, very important shift -- they wanted the negroes to go away, they didn't want this man to be associated -- so booker t. washington -- it's like he put a bear hug on abraham lincoln and washington issued this series of lithographs, would have a big oval of him in the middle, and over his right shoulder would be frederick douglass, over his left shoulder abraham lincoln. it's like they had a baby and his name was booker and he did that because he hated dubois and dubois hated him and he wanted to say he had the mantle from douglas and lincoln but he also

did that to make lincoln useful in the larger struggle for black rights against this -- we can't imagine how horrible it was to be black at the turn of the century in america. it was horrible. imagine george wallace and bull connors everywhere. basically that's how it was. >> charles branham is the senior historian at the dusabo museum of american history, a place not visited by enough white people. i find it is a shame -- it is a great, great museum. >> that's where i interviewed le'ron bennett right after i came from your class, so it was great. >> when did you get -- i want to -- you're his -- when did you and how did you get hooked on history? >> i was just thinking about the references you were making. you and i went to college about the same time. i grew up in tennessee and you grew up in maryland and i wasn't expecting that question, but there were so many similarities including the fact that i

developed an early love for history, i think because i had such a terrible history teacher who was the coach and i remember all of my history classes being in the dark because they were all movies that were being shown reel to reel. and then one day -- remember, this was in the south, this is during separate but equal, this is when african-americans could go to certain stores but they could buy shoes but they couldn't try them on. >> right. >> i remember that we devoted one day to talking about african-americans. now, this has been an all-african-american high school, the second oldest high school in the city and i think it was probably against the law for him to do it but he said, "ok, we're going to talk about african-americans." everybody did a report on booker t. washington. >> really? >> that was the only african-american we knew and if you went to the old malco-theater they didn't say white and colored, you knew to go to the side and you knew to climb the stairs to go to the balcony because they had a picture of booker t. washington. >> that's a great story. >> i want to ask another question because i'm bringing it back to the day and i'm thinking

about bernie madoff. even though i'm a historian and i love history -- >> he's not black, he's a white man. >> from what i understand but we haven't done his d.n.a. studies. >> that's true. >> presumably. but i'm thinking about your interpretation of lincoln's motives in terms of his views on slavery, and you are absolutely right, but as we know, and the more you study lincoln the more you read about lincoln, the more you appreciate the complexity as one of the students just pinpointed out so i think there is another element here that might be some contemporary importance if we get back to the issue of class, an issue that you brought up and an issue that i think has tremendous relevance given what's going on economically in the society and also given the fact that we are now having realigning coalitions in large measure brought about by at least in part the election of barack obama.

you're absolutely right lincoln was concerned about preserving the privilege of free workers at the same time he had the distaste for -- he did not like his father and his father would pull him out of school, and lincoln loved to read, and make him work and basically made him -- would hire him out as a laborer. "we need more money, young man. you don't need that education. go out there and work for two or three days." you look at his record. he didn't really care that much for farmers -- even as a legislator in illinois, didn't really pay much attention to farmers. he hated the idea -- he loved to read. he loved education. he hated the idea that somebody would profit from the labor of others -- one of the most progressive things he ever said was "a black woman is my equal." not in the sense of racial equality but in the right to earn from her own labors. >> and put bread in her mouth. >> i also think in the age of

bernie madoff and an age where americans are become being increasingly sensitized to exploitation in which people can invent wealth out of whole cloth with new and new complex derivatives, what lincoln might say and how lincoln might feel about the economic crisis that we face, especially as it effects the -- as it affects the average working -- and this includes a great deal of african-americans because african-americans are the most unionized people in the country, as it might affect african-americans and other people of color. >> that's fascinating. i think that he would be horrified at the larger economic exploitation of individuals like us by this tiny group of unscrupulous people, is the simplest way to answer it. >> fascinating, sunday's "new york times" cover story is about -- instead of the death of the black middle class in detroit as a result of the -- >> right. >> go visit the masabo museum, ladies and gentlemen of the audience, if you have a question, please come down, step

up to the microphone and fire away. young lady. >> first of all thank you both for being here. i happen to be one of the convenors so i thank this illustrious group that i am honored to be a part of -- i thank you very much for including me, teresa caldwell, wherever you are. i have a question. the lincoln bicentennial is halfway over. we're halfway through 2009. illinois, fortunately, is one of the states that is continually doing recognition of abraham lincoln during this year which is fabulous. however, that's not happening

across the entire country where we had so much going on in every state but not constantly like in illinois. six more months of recognizing abraham lincoln as complex as he is, where do we go from here? what do we take from this bicentennial now? where do we go with lfrpg and all of his complexities? >> that's really good. i hadn't thought about that. most of the celebrations peaked in february. >> right. >> and we're doing way more in illinois every -- >> but we're doing another event in miami in november. like the similarly structured. for me, all i want is for people to be honest about lincoln's complexity and to understand -- to paraphrase shakespeare, he was all the better for being a little bad -- that he was greater for being flawed,

instead of pretending that he was the american jesus, you know, who walked on -- walked on water, the curious thing about lincoln is that each successive generation of americans has reconstructed lincoln in its own image. when we look in the mirror, we see lincoln reflected back. it doesn't matter if you're fidel castro's hero is abraham lincoln, ronald reagan's hero is lincoln. how could fidel castro and ronald reagan have the same hero? but they don't have the same guy. it's a different guy. and lincoln has this uncanny capacity in part because he was martyred to reflect back what is projected onto -- onto him. and i think to be able to teach him as kyle teaches him all across america would be doing everyone an enormous favor because i disagree with my friend harold holz. i don't think we need the myth of the perfect person, and then

we suppress evidence when they're -- you know, it doesn't fit the myth. i think that we need to understand it was a man, and that i like him better having lived with him for the last two years. >> and thank you for living with him as you have. we all benefit. >> thank you very much. >> how about you two young guys. >> i want to kid up here. i would love -- >> she's a kid. >> well, this is my favorite kid. >> oh, ok. >> thank you very much. >> how are you doing? >> fine. >> good to see you. you look younger than the last time i saw you. >> i'm going to keep getting younger because i've got a very young wife. >> sounds good to me. . . discussions

upon the issue of there are those who say lincoln didn't free the slaves, the slaves freed themselves. >> uh-huh. >> now, you indicated the economic factor that may have been involved between the europeans who were coming from europe in large numbers and the slave rebellions that were going off all across the country. would you do me a favor, and i think it would help our audience to get your ideas of that kind of contradictory statement, lincoln did not free the slaves, the slaves freed themselves? >> ok. it's a really good question, and what mr. black's referring to is the fact that there were many the fact that there were many revisionist historians who say, "forget that emancipation proclamation, these slaves were agitating for their own freedom, they were ones who escaped behind the union lines, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera,"

but the truth is more complicated than that -- what lincoln did was enormously important. to say -- weigh forget often that the emancipation proclamation didn't apply to all the slave states, it only applied to the confederacy, and lincoln, to his credit -- i mean, in all fairness, lincoln thought that it was unconstitutional for the president to abolish slavery. he thought he didn't have the power to do it but he thought that with war powers you could confiscate property, this was his argument and he was so afraid that the supreme court was going to nullify the emancipation proclamation, so -- the first thing that happens to african-americans is that when we find out that there were the border states in which slavery remained legal during the civil war, it's a shock, so you think why didn't he do that? because he couldn't because he was afraid kentucky would -- or maryland would go back -- would join the confederacy and that

would have been -- that would have been -- that would have been the end. but without the agitation of black abolitionists like william wells brown and william c. nell and harriet tubman and their role as journalists and writers and speakers and orators and agitators really between 1831 when william lloyd garrison founded "the liberator" newspaper and the end of the civil war, without the black abolitionists and the highest level black society, and then without the slaves running away, oppressing -- you know, joining the union, when the union forces liberated their areas of the south, and without lincoln being opposed to slavery simultaneously -- without both those things, slavery wouldn't have been abolished. maybe it would have been abolished eventually -- remember, it lasted in brazil until 1888.

it would have fallen sooner or later, but it fell much sooner because these two forces worked in concert and i think that's the fairest and most nuanced way to address the situation. all these black -- you know, we -- we exaggerate how many black people ran away to the north. even john hope franklin at most counted 50,000, and that includes people who were just run -- who would just run down to the swamp, hide out for the night and come back. it was hard to run away to the north. there were not millions of black people in the underground railroad. we tend to think of the underground railroad like penn station or grand central station. it wasn't like that. it was incredibly difficult to escape from slavery, and aus know, mr. black, many of the free negroes stayed in the south. did you know, in the 1860 census there were 440,000, about, free negroes -- i mentioned that earlier -- more than half lived

in the states tharp the confederacy and the border states where slavery was free and they stayed there, ladies and gentlemen, unmolested including my family, in eastern west virginia. they stayed there because that's where they had their family and that's where they had their property. they had to be given property in virginia and many of these other southern states. what are they going to do? go to new york? live in harlem? hang out and listen to jazz with charlie parker? they stayed where they were raised. many of them -- this is the dirtiest secret in african-american history -- thata surprisingly high percentage of the free negroes in the south owned slaves themselves. we explain it away saying but they only owned their mother -- yeah, they owned tir mother, they owned their sister, they owned their wife and they owned some other workers too -- a great -- a surprisingly high number owned workers who they

did not liberate throughout the south. there were enough black -- free negroes who supported the confederacy that they voluntarily formed a regiment in the state of north carolina to fight for the confederacy, and black confederate troops are featured on the cover of "harper's weekly" in 1863. frederick douglass used this as an argument to make lincoln allow black men to fight because remember, lincoln didn't want to do it. lincoln made a famous statement in 1862. he said, "i suppose we could arm them, but if we did their arms would end up in the hands of the confederates within a week" because he thought that they were incompetent and not smart enough to win and eventually, as i said, the north was losing the war, frederick douglass was agitating and this book by casemore persuaded him to change his mind incrementally. so again, we -- it's not only the myth-makers who idealized

lincoln, we have our own myth-makers in the african-american historical establishment. all the egyptians looked like michael jordan. all our people were black gods and kings. you know, we were not complicitous in the slave trade. there wouldn't be a slave trade -- africans sold other africans to white people. that was the slave trade. that's the first thing we honestly have to admit. remember the story of stanley livingstone -- dr. livingstone. the reason that was important was almost no white men had penetrated the interior of africa. what was there? no roads. snakes. mosquitoes. death. malaria. right? the white people were along the coasts. it was black kingdoms like queen ajenga's kingdom, ghana, dalma, they grew rich from the slave trade. they would go to war just to sell other black people to white people. this is something we have been

so ashamed about we pretend it's not true. it is the nasty, dirty secret of african-american history. we are just as corrupt and despicable as any other people and if we have the right to oppress we will oppress just like the white man oppressed us. that's human nature, unfortunately that's just the way it is and the only way to overcome that is to be honest about it, be honest about it, admit the truth and then all try to do better as my main man cornell west says, "we're all recovering racists." "we're all recovering racists." >> dr. gates has to leave, timmy -- dr. gates has to leave so there will be no questions, i'm terribly sar, i could sit here for hours. i feel enlightened. it's a pleasure to know you. a pleasure to know you. >> henry louis gates and rick

kogan, congressman jesse jackson jr., thank you for being with us, the abraham lincoln bicentennial commission, thank you for being with us. goodnight. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2009] >> 8 american battleships in hawaii were sunk or badly damaged. of the 300 american aircraft were destroyed. 2300 americans were some -- were killed. the national park service oversees the memorial. this is about one hour. it is dealing with pearl harbor. in a hurricane for nine days, coming over for san diego -- here you have a rather green crew, but we got into honolulu, and some of us got

liberty. we took a taxi in to the army-navy y in downtown hawaii and i walked across the street. i ordered a soda. and the lady said, "you're from the u.s.s. ward. and i said "how do you know?" she said, "you're all that delicate shade of green." the u.s.s. ward was the guard ship -- or part of destroyer division 80 which consisted of four old destroyers, the ward, the schley, the allan and the shu. we rotated duty. the regulations were that on all the charts of the world was an indication that no submarine must approach pearl harbor within 100 miles without coming to the surface and requesting a destroyer escort on the surface to approach any closer to honolulu or pearl harbor.

we had oftentimes been called to general quarters when the sonar man believed that he heard screws. the captain backed up the sonar man all the time. if the sonar man heard screws, we went to general quarters and it was our responsibility and we knew it to sink any sub that was attempting to reach pearl harbor submerged. the antares supply ship was coming in to pearl harbor at0635, or a little before that, towing a barge, and between the antares and the barge, this little two-man sub was trying to sneak into the harbor. looked like a 50-gallon oil drum on top of maybe three or four of them that were laid down below it with a broomstick, sticking up. and, of course, that broomstick was the periscope and i'm sure that the man on the bridge could tell that there was something

like your prism so that at the top of this broomstick they could see the periscope but it was too far away for us to know that it was anything like that. we thought it might have been a toy or who knows. we had never heard of or seen anything like a two-man submarine before. the folksle of the ship was rolling and -- the focsle of the ship was rolling and pitching and the rounds weighed 75 pounds, here you are staggering on the pitching deck with live ammunition with fuses on the nose and you're kind of afraid of that kind of ammunition. we fired, and you could watch down the end of the barrel and you could see that the projectile just barely missed the sub. i thought if it had another coat of paint on the sub it might have activated the graysed fuse.

that's how close we came. the gun hit at the base of the conning tower and i'm sure it killed the japanese commander of that sub. the captain said stand by to ram," he made up his mind he was going to get that submarine one way or another, it was not going to get through, he found out later that it not only had two torpedoes but it also had a 500-pound detonation charge in the stern and that the skipper of that sub was supposed to come alongside another ship and blow himself up along with the other ship. we were a little surprised to find a submarine that close on the surface. so we knew that it was -- wasn't supposed to be there. i think my impression was that perhaps the submarine might have been one single reconnaissance

effort. i had no concept at all that it was going to be followed up with major combat until i saw the planes coming, which was an hour and 20 minutes later. >> i was a crew member of the utility squadron two on the luke field side of ford island. that particular sunday, i had the duty, and i was actually at the hangar at the time that the attack began. i was waiting to muster the ongoing duty section. we thought a plane had crashed. so we ran out of the hangar -- our hangar, looking across the runway, we see the smoke coming up from the hangar. we still didn't know what was happening, and about that time here come the plane diving out of the sun. he dropped two bombs and he pulled out of his dive. we could see the symbol of the rising sun under his wings, and then we knew we were being attacked by the japanese.

i start looking for a place to hide. we didn't have any bomb shelters or anything. i was still looking for a place to hide when here come the japanese planes flying from south to north up on the west side of ford island, and they were flying so low i could actually see the goggles on the rear gunner's helmet as he swings his machine gun around and began to strafe us with machine gunfire. i look out there and hear all this splattering concrete where the bullets are hitting, just splattering puffs of dust -- concrete dust -- and i jumped behind this tractor that was parked there and it gave me the protection i needed. i noticed a couple of my shipmates had picked up the.45 caliber pistols that had been used on watch the night before, the guys had just taken their pistols off and laid them on the table to exchange with the ongoing duty section and a couple of them grabbed these pistols and started shooting at the japanese planes with these pistols.

i discovered that there is a motion that's more -- that there is an emotion that's more strong than fear. that's shame. i began to feel so ashamed of myself, i said, "here, i'm trained to be a gunner and i'm hiding." the lord gave me enough guts to leave my hiding place and go into the armory where the machine guns were stored. by this time, some other ordnance men had gathered so we put them on the mounts of our guns on the ground. it was in the waist high of a catalina patrol boat gunner, and i got behind that gun and manned it for the rest of the attack. i think everybody has a little coward in them, but once you can get over that -- and by the way, this is where i praise the training of the united states navy. they train and train and train, and you do it over and over and over. when the time came, we just did what we were trained to do. we didn't have to think.

you just did whaufs trained to do. i was angry. so see, my feelings went from fear to shame to anger. if i could have, i would have shot every one of them down. that's the way i felt. there was still mixed in, there that fear was in the background now but it was still there. planes were just everywhere now like bees around a hive, you know. i don't know how they kept from running into each other. i'm sure it was all planned out. they had rehearsed it and rehearsed it. by this time you could close your eyes and shoot in the air and you're bound to hit something because they were everywhere. this particular plane, i'm thinking about, had dropped a bomb or a torpedo, one, on probably the california because he was sort of pulling out of

his dive and he was coming right across the runway headed over our hangar, and all of our gunners including yours truly was shooting at him. and we could see our tracer bullets penetrating his fuselage and he burst into flames, with flames of smoke trailing out of his tail looked like he was going to crash right out there in the channel. but he got in the middle of the channel and all of a sudden he does a little arcing dive and purposely crashes on the crane deck of the u.s.s. curtis. and that became known as the first kamikaze of world war ii. it was uncanny what they were able to pull off there. just like yamamoto said, they woke a sleeping giant. >> we were going on a picnic at the naval ammunition dump that the marines were doing guard duty at, and the previous week the port -- the starboard side

had the picnic and this week we were going, we were looking forward to it because i had been there a couple months earlier and we had a nice time and i was look forward to drinking beer, playing baseball, pitching horse shoes. there were planes flying down like if they were -- not like if they were, we assumed they were doing target practice because out at sea we would have pulled a target behind us, probably, maybe 100 yards or so, and the planes would dive bomb at it and practice dive bombing, and we watched them, and we says, "hey, what kind of emblems are those? we couldn't understand why are they doing this on a sunday? this is the first time. then in port. we didn't realize. we discussed this among ourselves. which in the few seconds that we had -- then across the bay, we seen a ship afire -- smoking. so the officer of the day was on the quarter deck also, and he had the bugler sound fire and rescue. we were going to drop what we

had and go up to our ace mates and get ready, whatever we had to do, then there was a call, "belay that call" and then short -- a few seconds after that we heard the familiar -- that was general quarters music. it didn't dawn on us those are japanese planes. when we said "general quarters" only thing we could think of then were the japanese because there was so much talk about what was going on between japanese and our country. many things flashed through my mind. one of them was "what is my mother going to say if i'm killed?" that was my biggest concern. there was oil on the ship. i never could climb that hawser in school that you could climb up in the gym, but that day this was oily, so i climbed that up even with the oil, and you know how hard you've got to grip. that's just like trying to hold onto a greased pig, so you can see what you can do when there is anxiety or when there is fright or when there is anger or

danger or whatever you want to call it. let's say time heals everything. that's the way i look at it. in time -- how long can you hold your anger? are you going to die with it? i don't want to die with it. let's say we did the opposite. did they forgive us about hiroshima? if they forgive us about hiroshima, i think they should forgive -- i think it saved lives on both sides. >> i took my bugle and ran up to the bridge. that's where my battle station was. it couldn't about -- a couple minutes before 8:00. i didn't even sound colors, so i'm really not sure. then captain bennion came up, and this is a little after -- a couple of minutes after 8:00 and he come up there and said, "my god, we're at war" and the next thing i remember, there was a tremendous explosion on the tennessee near number two gun

turret. and there was shrapnel all over the place, then i looked around and captain benion was laying on the deck -- he had most of his -- he was almost tore in half, and we made him as comfortable as we could, and this was just a little bit about eight or nine minutes after 8:00 and we stood up and all of a sudden i saw the arizona explode, and i tell you, i never was so scared in my whole life. you could feel the tremendous heat and the concussion blew us back into thpilot house. came back out and captain benion was laying there -- i think it was a signalman went down and got hold of our executive officer, commander helincotter, he came up and captain benion was still alive, he looked down and said, "captain, what are my orders?" the only thing captain benion said, he says, "the ship is

yours. i'm not going it make it." that's all. then we stayed up on the bridge until all of the torpedoes and strafing and then commander helincotter said "what the hell are we doing up here? let's get down below where we can help out." we stayed aboard and fought fires and rescued some people from down below in the officers -- i was with a group, three of us, we went down and busted one of the doors open because everything was sprung shut, and we got two officers out -- we got them top side, and then the water was about up to our navels, so we climbed up on the quarterdeck, the fire was just -- we did everything we could. some of the guys coming up through the -- by frame 87 -- their clothes were burning, and we threw them down on the deck and rolled on top of them and tried to pat the fire out. finally the tennessee fired up

her engines and to push the fire from the water, pushed it away from the ship, that helped a lot, then a tug boat came up and started to squirt us with water and then command helincotter said "abandon ship" so we passed the word "abandon ship" and that was about 9:30. then we fought our way back because there was not as much fire forward as there was aft by the arizona, because she was just one big ball of fire. one guy, in particular, orville, he said, "my gosh, i left my money in my wallet. my wallet's in my locker." he fights his way back through all of the fire. now, in the casemates, we had five-inch shells sitting along the bulkhead to use, and if those got hot they were going to blow up, so he fought his way back through the casemates, gets to his locker, opens it up, gets

it out, puts it in his pocket, fights his way back out to the focs'le, he was making knots, he took off all of his clothes, folded them nice and neatly, laid them on the focs'le, swam to ford island and all of his money stayed right there. i' never forget that. it's strange. i remember the focsle, i remember diving into the water and i remember climbing on ford island but that 50 or 60 yards, it's gone, i don't know, and i can't tell you. i don't know. that night about 7:00 we heard these airplanes coming in, we thought they were japanese, and they were off the enterprise, and i wasn't the first one to

open up. as they were coming in it looked like the 4th of july. we shot down the six -- we killed three of the pilots, and one of the guys that was coming in as he was landing -- i put my machine gun and i filled his airplane full of holes and i didn't realize that it was one of ours, and the guy's name is -- i don't know if you have ever met him or not, jim daniels. he's a good friend of mine. but he said if he could have caught me that night he would have killed me. i believe he would have, too. you couldn't sleep, you were on watch all the time, if not eating sandwiches, the eight hours you're off you're supposed to sleep but you can't do it -- your nerves are just right on

the edge. and i think it was about -- i think wednesday or thursday, i fell asleep, and, of course, it was a while before i could hear from all of those torpedoes -- we took nine torpedoes, and the arizona blowing up, and the tennessee was completely firing their five-inch guns, and god, i said, "i'm going to be deaf." of course, i wear hearing aids today, but it was -- it was about a week before i could really hear. then if somebody come up behind you and clapped, why, you would jump 15 feet, you know. we had 106 dead. about 300 -- a little over 300 wounded. and, of course, our captain received the congressional medal of honor -- captain benion. i played taps for him the next night there in the warehouse where we stayed, you know, for his death.

it was the most beautiful taps i ever played in my life. >> pennsylvania was flagship of the pacific fleet and we were also i believe at that time flagship of the navy. it was admiral kimmel's ship. he didn't happen to be on it that day. when we used to go out on patrol, general quarters, the saying used to be "the japanese are attacking," we would run to our battle station and most of us knew that eventually we were going to have to fight the japanese. where that trickled down from, i have no idea -- i suppose from the politicians to the officers, the officers to us. we expected to fight them eventually. we just didn't know when. there was no need for radio communication. it was obvious to all the ships in the harbor that we were under attack. so they had us carrying

ammunition out to the three-inch 50 on the fantail. i had just been handed a three-inch shell, and i was getting ready to run it out to the gunny, and the next thing i knew i was flat on my face. something went through my right thigh and out my rear end and i had a six-by-eight-inch piece blown out of the left thigh, i had five pieces of shrapnel in the left leg, my right hand was shot open, i lost part of the left elbow, i lost part of the muscle out of a bicep. they finally put me into a bunk, and i was lie ing there and i saw one of the third-class radiomen go by, and i said, "hey, osmond," he looked at me, and he says, "who are you?" and then i -- then i realized that either i said it is thailand.

walk away from me. i found out that the navy said these listed as superficial wounds. it seems that the big problem was keeping me alive because of the burns. when the bomb went off, the blast took the skin off of our legs, arms, face. my brother was a sergeant in indianapolis. they were out on patrol. he saw me about one year later. he said when he came in after the attack on wednesday, they were looking for me. they had me on the missing list. they had this large naval hospital. he went over there looking for me. he said he finally found a group of us.

tagged my toe already. that's how he identified me. but he said even he didn't know me. he said we looked like roast turkeys lined up. the pearl harbor story is important to me because people should be made aware of these things that they really did happen, and hopefully, they won't happen again, but, of course, that's dreaming. because it happens in the world every day. somewhere. >> we came in port on fwrdz afternoon, december 5th, and we waited in mid-channel for the lexington which at that time was the world's largest aircraft carrier. as soon as the lexington got under way, we took her place. monday, the ship was scheduled to come back to the states and then i would have gotten out and i would saved like $400 and i was going to go to medical school. the day before is noneventful except that i didn't go anywhere.

i didn't go because honolulu, in those days, was not -- waikiki was not a favorite port because there were no women. there were 2,000 men to every woman so we liked it stateside better. somebody said, "what are all those planes in the air? what are all those planes doing out on a sunday morning?" and i could hear vaguely a droning, you know, which was not unusual because ford island was a naval air base. naval air station. i saw i'm almost positive six of them, i stood there and saw the bombs drop and i saw this huge red flame and black smoke and i thought, "oh, my god, somebody really goofed because those are real bombs." we were used to being bombed with duds, and i thought, "my god, somebody really made a

mistake. those are real bombs." and just about that time i felt the ship lurch. so we were being hit by torpedoes on the opposite side, which, of course, i couldn't see that side. when the torpedo hit, i actually felt the ship lurch. see, even when we were hit by dud bombs, the ship was somewhere around 22,000 tons, and we would go below the decks, of course, during bombing runs, we weren't walking around, and when the bomb would hit you could feel the ship. it was a downward feeling. this was kind of an outward feeling. and i'm sure there was a torpedo -- there is some question about whether the bombers got there first or the torpedoes but i'm sure that lurch was a torpedo. it was a matter of seconds before the bugler sounded general quarters -- that's where you go to your battle station, so i grabbed my first-aid kit -- i was a pharmacist's mate and my

battle station was amidship, and as i was running down -- running down the passageway, the ship lurched again. now, this time, i don't know whether it was a bomb or a torpedo, but it knocked me through a logroom door where they kept the records, so i went this way and my first aid kit went that way and i got up a little dazed, you know -- and you don't have time to think, but anyway, i dived down the ladder below -- see, our battle stations were below the armored deck, but we no sooner got down there that we could already tell the ship was listing. that was a matter of one, two, three minutes and everybody was looking around, "what in the world is going on? what's happening?" and we were there, i'm sure, not over a minute or two, and then the bugler sounded "abandon ship" and the boatswain was sounding "abandon ship, abandon ship" and we had taken on

ammunition in san francisco for the fleet, and the naval ammunition and we were with all this ammunition and i thought we were going to blow up and i wanted to get away from there fast. these things occur to you in a matter of seconds. by then, the ship is like this. so i was going to run and dive way out, and about then the ship really jerked. well, i thought at the time, and for some time after that it was another bomb orator pedo,ut what it actually was was the mooring lines. see, there is 22,000 tons, these great big lines holding the ship tied to the quay, you know, so when the ship -- as the ship was sinking, those lines snapped, and when they snapped that threw me off balance and i landed on my fannie and scraped across those barnacles on the side and the bottom. when i got in the water, when i bobbed up and tried to get my

bearings, you know, which way is up, and i saw this motor launch, and there was a coxswain, a bow hook, a boat hook and he was pulling these guys out of the water, so i started swimming towards that motor launch, and about then a strafer came by and i could see the -- you know, the ping, ping, ping in the water, the bullets hitting the water -- ahead of me, but in line with that motor launch. so it didn't -- you know, you make decisions in seconds and i figured, "now, that's going to be a target but they're not going to pick poor little old me by myself" so i changed course, instead of going that way i headed straight for ford island. and if anybody else tells you who was first -- he was first on the beach tell him he's a liar because i was first on the beach. when the ship was sunk, i was transferred to the hospital and we would get these aviators, japanese aviators for days, weeks, even, and they would be brought to the morgue, and when they were stripped we found

these maps, and where the utah was, they had in big letters -- there was a lot of japanese writing in the margins. . >> going to see and see the world. about 10 lake weeks after graduation from high school, i enlisted -- two weeks after graduation from high school, i enlisted in the coast guard. i decided that it would be

wonderful with full of girls. -- hula girls. there were about 13 of us that were still together. we were in omaha. we were 17 year-old or 18 year- old kids. we decided to go to a bar. the black cat had a huge menu above the bar. a is for a bail -- "a" is for ale. and so we cannot and "a" and then eight "ba "b" and so fortho on. they did not care if you had the

money to buy it. december 7, 1941, i was in sick bay. of was talking to a friend of mine who was a pharmacist. what do you have that is going to take care of this? and then the bombs started comi. i asked what he had that would take care of this, and then the bombs started coming. i really did not know whether this was something i was imagining, the thumping, and all the rest of these things are going on in my mind. this signal is clang, clang, clang, clang. this is the way of the landing party, general quarters, this is everything. nobody knows what it is, bang, bang, bang. we have 300 guys running around,

saying what are we doing? this was fire and rescue. ok, i will go to that station. i get there and say where are you going? this is general quarters. someone else said this was something else. we were all running around run during what the devil to do. we were so confused we had known for idea of what was going on than anything. all we ever worked with was a dummy, ammunition, loading and going through all this. down below, about five or six stories, way down in the magazine, is locked. it is a summary court-martial to open that, a summary court- martial to open that unless you have an officer. we are up on top saying my god, they are here and flying around. they are coming. cent of live ammunition.

the guys said you are all drunk up there. i am not going to get a summary court-martial. some of the officers are ashore. no one is going to open this thing up. we are screaming back and forth and back and forth, then the live ammunition starts coming out from under. and we start firing. at time -- at that time, there were not world tensions. he did not really think about having a war. for instance, when the japanese attacked, we said it would probably take two weeks and we would blow them out of the water and we would all go home. some said they would not shave until we won the war. others said they would not let their hair grow until we won the war, and that kind of thing. there is a whole different kind of thing, a whole different idea, concept, feeling. one of our men was there for some official reason or another and came back and told us of the

sinking of the battleships, and of course, we thought he was out of his mind. it could not be. we never expected it, never thought it would happen, and the japanese paper tiger kind of thing. we will get them. >> i had a chance to go home for a weekend pass, and it was on that sunday morning we heard all this explosion going on and wondered what was happening. i looked up in the sky toward the direction of pearl harbor. it was a bright, nice morning, and i could see all those bright puffs. we heard over the radio, calling

all military personnel to report to their stations immediately, that the japanese had attacked pearl harbor, and this is war. naturally, everybody was shocked. at that time, we had our bus station at the army and navy ymca which is located right in honolulu. from there, as we were traveling over to the barracks where i was stationed at that time, i looked down into pearl harbor and i saw a head a panoramic view of the destruction. the arizona was blazing in flames. all the other ships were a fire, and what stood out in my mind was the oklahoma had capsized. it was on a side, and i saw sailors aboard the whole of the

ship, scrambling on it. that was for them to keep out of the fire, because all the water was on fire. i was shocked, needless to say. we were expecting the japanese navy to come down and invade us by sea, but it turned out they did invade us, but it was by air. it was a total surprise. i just could not get over it. in the infantry we had a big group of japanese boys as well as filipinos, chinese. they were worried that they were going to take the japanese -- anyone with the japanese name, or that you did not have to be japanese. if you had a japanese name or were adopted by someone with the japanese name, you were automatically taken along with them. when i got wind that they were going to do that, take the

japanese boys out, i figured that was a big mistake,@@@@@@@@r our morale went down. i figured that they might as well get out of there. of was able to be an electrician before. i asked the man in charge if they would send an electrician. for them to put a request from their over to inventory, which they did. we woke up to the animals. i look at its from this point of view. that was nothing at all for us. at long -- as long it was an

inmate at death. we could picture ourselves as being there in that person's vote. >> i had never been on a destroyer, never even seen the inside of one, but i knew that is where i wanted to go. when i was in school in new york and got orders, the early morning of december 7, starting at midnight i was the ood on the quarterdeck, so i had to watch from midnight to 4:00. after that, i turned in, and i was asleep when i heard the general alarm on the downs next door. just then, my roommate came in who was just coming off lunch. his name was wesley pete craig.

he had just been relieved. the watch is ordinarily relieved a quarter before the hour. he was then shuffling around the room, and i heard the alarm go off. he said some dunderhead must have sounded a general alarm. the general alarm on all ships in the navy in those days was used to call the crew to quarters, or to muster, at 8:00 in the morning, every day except sunday. however, it was not unusual to hear an alarm sounding some place across the harbor, because somebody would forget it was sunday and turn on the general alarm, so it was not a surprise. i rolled over and thought nothing about it. within two or three minutes, craig was back again and speaking in a pretty severe voice said wake up, get up, we are being bombed. the japs are bombing us.

i put on my helmet and pistol and got out in a hurry. i ran into the skipper on the main deck and he was in a hurry to get the magazine's open so we could get some 5 inches ammunition out. we soon realize our guns were out of commission. so there was not really much for me to do, so i went on top of the bridge to the director platform. the thing remember most is the high-level bombers in a be shaped formation going from left to right as i observe them. were less in line with where the battleships would be. we could very clearly see the bombs falling. the sun reflected from the bombs as they fell, and we could see them as they came down, especially when they first let the airplanes. it got very noisy where we were.

we were being strafed and bombed. i remember seeing a pretty good fire start back on the port side of our ship. i remember seeing men on their hands and knees, trying to scramble away from the flames. i thought certainly we have lost some people here. the fires were really raging. our skipper, a lieutenant commander at the time, said abandon ship. that is what we all did in a hurry. there was no place to hurry to, really, so we just tried away from the ship. there was no hurry to get any place, because you may be running into more problems than you were running away from. how was with a man, i do not recall his name but i would know him if he walked into day. we were 30 or 40 yards from the

ship whenever an explosion behind us. it was a hit on the side between the ship and where we work. i have a picture of that that shows a yard workmen standing in it. some of that debris hit me on the helmet. somebody came along and wanted to know in a hurry where or how they could get to the fuel docks or the controls that allow the field to be pumped into a ship. for some reason, i knew something about that. i do not know who he was or where he was going, but i took him. reflag a car down and went toward a submarine base and i got this guy to where i thought he wanted to go. then i went on to the submarine base. there were several torpedo boats roaring their engines alongside

the submarine base pierre. i stepped about -- stepped aboard one and ask if i could go along. the skipper of that ship was lieutenant j. g. harry parker. he looked at me and said what can you do? he said my torpedoman is not here, come with us. as we were abreast of the shawl, it detonated, and some of it came down on pt 22 and went through the engine room, through the main deck and into the engine room. it must have been for 10:00 that a japanese plane came down fairly low over the harbor and we took a shot at it. that was the last plane i saw. there was a commander on the

beach there and he looked at me and he could tell that i was not a pt boat for because i was still wearing whites. he said what shipper you from? i told him, and he said the casson is no more. he said you go into the submarine base and go to the first office on the left and turn that pistol in. i saluted him and went up the side wall to the submarine base office, right past the office he tell me to go in, up the stairway, back a long hallway to the other end of the building, down the stairway, and out. i returned to the wreck of the casson in not number one with my pistol. i think roosevelt was so hungry for us to get a good war and have us all united, and this was undoubtedly the best way to do

it, so that was the goal, and he got it accomplished. my brother told me all about how good a ship that was and how you could learn something there. he was right, i learned a lot, everything you would ever need to do to repair another ship or anything else electrical or anything, we did it. i wanted to put in my years there to learn something. i did not plan on pearl harbor, though. we got a call from somebody that wanted some work done on the arizona. i think it was some work on the evaporators. it probably had another few things that we would do. we had been alongside 5 or 6

days or something like that. i had before-8 watch in the morning on sunday morning -- i had the 4-8 watched on sunday morning. i was relieved of my watch, went down to the guy who was supposed to relieve me, and he was almost asleep, but i gave him my pistol, went up back on deck, and i heard planes and i heard booming noises. my brother, being in the battery locker on the vessel, the battery repair, and i ran back there to get a cup of coffee. i did not get my copy. i told him that something was happening, and i heard the

quartermaster say that those were japanese planes. well, i told my brother and the coffee drinkers in the battery locker about that, and i do not know whether they believe me or not, but they rang the fire drill. i saw fibers coming by, strafing everything in sight. what got us was the high-level bombers, the same thing that hit the arizona. these were 16 inch naval projectiles. they had modified them with tenfins. we were in the wrong place, and

we got hit aft. it went all the way through the ship and began to flood the aft part of the ship. along about that time is when the same type bomb came through into the arizona magazine. that was quite a bit of noise there. we sure heard it. rocked the ship pretty bad. that is when it blew quite a few people from the ship over the side, and of course there were a lot of flash burns from the fire. our captain went back there to see why the darned gun would not work. he should not have been there either. he got blown over the side.

then one of the officers, i am not sure which one, and it does not make the difference now, ordered abandon ship. we had casualties, and they had taken most of them to the radio room. everybody was either going over the side, or i was headed for the stern, hoping to get to a motor launch. i noticed these injured in the radio room, so i got another guy and i and we carried the guy that i knew who had been heard in the back, shot with shrapnel in the back, and we carried him. he weighed quite a bit more than i did. we carried him down and back to the quarter deck and put him in the boat. by that time, our captain had come back aboard and he countermanded the or to abandon

ship. so we went back to our battle stations. normally when you are in this condition, you don't have enough steam up to maneuver. you have enough to run a generator or alternator and the power and light's, but you do not have this thing. so all that time that had gone when they hit and we were to get out there, we could not do it. we would have been right down there along with the arizona, except for a tug that came by. i forgot which one it was. it drew a line to us and began to pull away. the fires on the arizona, of course they had no power. they could not operate the aircraft guns, not normally.

they tried to do it manually, and i know this because i saw them. they were firing their 5 inch guns, at least once in awhile. the fire had i do not know if it was my imagination. i do not think it was. i saw those gunners fire all around them. they were dying. i mean really. i tried to suppress that idea as much as i can, because it bothers me quite a bit. i do not even like to remember. i do not like to think of it 55 years later. toomey, h